Quotes from Boots Riley

When my daughter was born, that was the first time I cried from happiness.

I think that in order to make revolution, you need to make reforms, but you should make these reforms with revolution in mind.

You can't get much done by yourself. Speaking as someone who made a movie - and it took hundreds of people to make it happen - I can say that.

I used to get worried about writing a love song, because everyone else is doing them, and there are already enough of them out there. But I came to realize that there's a reason for that: Love is powerful, one of the most powerful emotions there is.

When people listen to Jay-Z, they're working all day or trying to work and pay their bills, and what they hear is someone who's free. Who doesn't have to worry about the electricity. But all we're taught is that those who are rich deserve to be rich because they worked harder than the rest of us, or they're smarter.

People want something that's relevant to their lives. They want something that means something to them, and they want something where it seems like people have thought about what they're saying.

That existential crisis is something you rarely see portrayed by black characters; the idea that people think about their own existence and that they have hopes and dreams is taken away from people of color in their representation.

I want my music to be not only representative of other people's lives but also contributing something to the struggle that people are going through.

I've never really subscribed to the theory that repression breeds rebellion. I don't think that's really true.

The United States is going to keep on with its imperialist ways.

People want things that address their everyday reality, and that goes for stuff that isn't political - with singer-songwriter music, people want things that touch them.

A lot of organizers tell me that while they are making signs or doing whatever they do, they are listening to the Coup.

The ultimate credo of capitalism is to exploit people. It's not like this is just an incidental problem; it's inherent in the system.

I grew up around politics. I organized my first campaign when I was 14, a walk-out in my high school to protest the year-round school schedule.

I'm not a classically trained composer, and I can't sing very well.

Sometimes my influences are really on my sleeve. So I just make sure to wear a lot of sleeves.

If what you want is actual change, then what has to be built is a mass movement that is militant and can use direct action to slow or stop profit. A movement that can do that can demand whatever it wants.

A lot of libertarians and ultra-capitalists like to put out this idea that competition makes for better creativity. But it's just because we don't see all the creativity that's been crushed.

I always have thought that part of being involved with life is the same thing as just wanting to kick it with your friends, and being involved with life on a deeper level is wanting to change the situation that you're in.

You can't co-opt labor issues if you are in the working class.

You make art, you make it from what you know, and that's the best way to make art. You get lost in the details and make something that feels like it's yours.

I wanted to be part of changing the world. I don't want to just stand by and watch it be however it is.

I think most people would love for us to be a socialist society.

There's this zeitgeist happening, and people are more open to 'Sorry to Bother You' being a hit with 'Get Out' being out there. But that zeitgeist is also happening because of the movements going back to Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Usually, film is years behind. It just so happens that, this time, everything is lining up.