Charles Manson Quotations

I was a beatnik in the '50s before the hippies came along.

Sure, I'm crazy. But that used to mean something. Now, everybody's crazy.

The real strong have no need to prove it to the phonies.

In my mind's eye my thoughts light fires in your cities.

If I wanted to kill somebody, I'd take this book and beat you to death with it, and I wouldn't feel a thing.

I don't want parole; I'm too busy working on my web site....

Will of God… Whatever you wanna call it... You call it Jesus, call it Mohammed, call it goobybob, call it nuclear mind, call it blow the world up, call it your heart. Whatever you wanna call it, it's still music to me. It's there. It's the will of life.

I know and understand you are much more than what I think you are but first I must deal with you the way I think you even if that's only my own thinking and not you.

We use the word God. God hooks all the other words up. I'm the pope. I'm ten times the pope. I'm sixty times the pope. But I'm the pope in the hills and in the mountains.

Animals shouldn’t be hunted and nature shouldn’t be disturbed, even destroyed, to benefit the whims of mankind

I'm Jesus Christ, whether you want to accept it or not, I don't care.

If you're going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy.

I ain't got no magical powers and mystical trips and all that kind of crap. It's kind of silly.

You people would convict a grilled cheese sandwich of murder and the people wouldn’t question it.

These children that come at you with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn't teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.

If I wanted anyone killed, I'd kill them myself. But I don't want anyone killed because I love my own life. Does that make any sense? I love life and I love living, but no, I don't want to live in society. Society don't want me, why should I want them? I don't belong in society and there's no place in society that I fit.

No sense makes sense.

I don't wanna take my time going to work, I got a motorcycle and a sleeping bag and ten or fifteen girls. What the hell I wanna go off and go to work for? Work for what? Money? I got all the money in the world. I'm the king, man. I run the underworld, guy. I decide who does what and where they do it at. What am I gonna run around like some teeny bopper somewhere for someone elses money? I make the money man, I roll the nickels. The game is mine. I deal the cards

From the world of darkness I did loose demons and devils in the power of scorpions to torment.

Maybe I should have killed four, five hundred people. Then I would have felt better. Then I would have felt like I really offered society something.

So for you people who are filled with fear that I might someday be released: breathe easy, I don't see it happening.

If we don't wake up to that, there's going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we're doing bad things to the atmosphere,

My life is not important here.

Most of the people at the ranch were just people you did not want, people that were alongside the road.

There is no way that you can know the taste of water unless you drink it or unless it has rained on you or unless you jump in the river.

I'm involved in too many things. I have a Web site I'm working on.

All the men in the joint raised me up, told me what to do, what was right and wrong, told me when to sit down, when to stand up, I just did whatever I was told.

I don't know what 'my way' is. Everybody keeps telling me I got all these things. I read the other day where I had magical powers. I told everybody in the chapel 'zap, zap, zap, zap!' I said 'Where's my magical powers at?' Well, you can't believe what you read in the press. I ain't got no magical powers or mystical trips or anything like that. It's kind of silly.

Anything you see in me is in you. If you want to see a vicious killer, that's who you'll see, do you understand that? If you see me as your brother, that's what I'll be. It all depends on how much love you have. I am you, and when you can admit that, you will be free. I am just a mirror.

How old am I? I'm as old as my mother told me. How's that?

I was so smart when I was a kid that I learnt that I was dumb fast.

Why couldn't we put on a defense? I had seventeen witnesses standing outside the door. They just dropped the defense and went on to the penalty phase. Like everything was cut and dry before it went off to martini land.

Just because you're convicted in a court room doesn't mean you're guilty of something.

Your Honor, I am in a difficult position. The news media has already executed me and buried me...If anyone is hypnotized, the people are hypnotized by the lies being told to them...There is no attorney in the world who can represent me as a person. I have to do it myself.

I'm probably one of the most dangerous men in the world if I want to be. But I never wanted to be anything but me.

The way out of a room is not through the door. Just don't want out. And you're free...

There's been fifty-million people that died since Sharon Tate died and I got everybody in Santa Claus land chasing me, trying to make me feel remorse for one psychotic episode of (Tex) Watson.

Death is the greatest form of love.

We're all our own prisons, we are each all our own wardens and we do our own time. I can't judge anyone else. What other people do is not really my affair unless they approach me with it. Prison's in your mind. Can't you see I'm free?

The POLICE used to watch over the people Now they are watching the people

Most of the attorneys just want the publicity of the trial. They don't care about the man at all. If there was some kind of writ that could get me out of here tomorrow, they wouldn't bring it, because they all want to go through the whole trial and wring every last drop of publicity out of the whole thing.

I told them that anything they do for their brothers and sisters is good if they do it with a good thought....

I will have you removed if you don't stop. I have a little system of my own.

I have killed no one and I have ordered no one to be killed.

All you fakers are in for it. I begged you on my knees and you didn't listen and now I can't hear you.

Time and circumstance made me into this Manson guy, Satan. Society wanted to buy this evil, mass-murdering-devil-fiend. I'm nobody. I'm the hobo in line. Give me a bottle of wine and put me on a train. I don't fit into the world you guys live in, so I live over there in the shadows of it.

My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system... I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you.

I'm in jail because people wanna keep me in jail. It ain't got nothing to do with the law.

If it wasn't for the publicity, I would've been out of here and gone a long time ago.

I have X'd myself from your world.

I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something....

Fear of vikings build castles.

If I haven't seen it, it's new to me.

Just give me my rights. All I want is the same rights that my fathers died for If I don't deserve no rights, then who does deserve rights? I didn't break no law.

To save the people from themselves it would take a greater fear than the earth has ever seen.

Now I am too beautiful to be set free.

I am not in jail. There is no jail.

Getting up every day and going through this again and again is hard.

I'm not your executioner. I'm not your devil and I'm not your God. I'm Charles Manson.

I'm not very wise to many things.

I know what I would say now and I don't lie, so I know I what I would say then. And I certainly wouldn't tell nobody to go in and do nothing to anybody that I wouldn't want done to me.

I loved my mother, she's a good girl.

Air is God, because without air we do not exist

You see, you can send me to the penitentiary, it's not a big thing. I've been there all my life anyway. What about your children? These are just a few, there is many, many more coming right at you.

We're not in Wonderland anymore Alice.

I've done nothing I'm ashamed of. Nothing I couldn't face God with. I wouldn't kill a bug.

I never had long hair before I got busted. I never had a beard before I got busted.

Remorse for what? You people have done everything in the world to me. Doesn't that give me equal right?

Paranoia is just a kind of awareness, and awareness is just another form of love.

It used to be that being crazy meant something. Now everybody is crazy.

I'd probably try to stop the rain forests from being cut down. I'd probably join the revolution down south somewhere and try to save my life on the planet Earth. I might go to Libya. I might go see the Ayatollah. I might go to France, catch somebody in France I'm upset with.

You are upset because one of your actors got on the wrong lane doing something with the wrong people. And you want to blame somebody else for it. And you got to dig up some poor-ass idiot that don't have the brain of a retarded spastican and make him a cult leader!

A baby is born into this world in a state of fear. Total paranoia and awareness. He sees the world with eyes not used yet. As he grows up, his parents lay all this stuff on him. They tell him, when they should be letting him tell them. Let the children lead you.

My philosophy is: Don't think.

Good for some may not be the same for others.

Let's clap our hands for the president and Jesus Christ and did I mention Charlie Manson and everybody else, who was nice.

I've been 15 years in the nut ward, for trying to stop the trees from being cut down, from trying to rearrange the lifestyle of a bunch of people who don't want to change. But they're gonna change because a cold wind is blowing. You're gonna change or else there's going to be no life left on the planet Earth.

Are you hep to what the Beatles are saying?... Dig it, they’re telling it like it is. They know what’s happening in the city; blackie is getting ready. They put the revolution to music... it’s 'Helter-Skelter.' Helter-Skelter is coming down.

Pain's not bad, it's good. It teaches you things. I understand that.

I didn't tie anybody up. And I was never on a scene where anyone was killed. I think the law says you can only keep me seventeen or eighteen years if I was never on a scene where anyone was killed. I was never on the crime scenes. I didn't kill nobody, I didn't tell nobody to get killed. I didn't get no trial, but we don't wanna hear that- don't wanna mix anything up with the truth.

My reality is my reality, and I stand within myself on my reality.

Progress? There's no such thing as progress. There's only change. You dig a hole in the ground, you build up a city, and you fight a war, and you call it progress?

Total paranoia is just total awareness.

I'm the paté on the Universal cracker. I'm the grout holding your shower tiles on. I'm out of the saddle, sprinting up that hill and eating glazed donut bracelets off the right arm of Jesus.

You know what they're doing to your Constitution? They're making a joke out of your Constitution. Love's not in your court room. And God is not in your heart.

If I could get angry at you, I would try to kill every one of you. If that's guilt, I accept it.

Living is what scares me. Dying is easy.

If I had a desire, it would be to be free from desire.

Paranoid schizophrenia in the forties, there was only a few of us because they just invented those tags from some college somewhere and we were just a small group of people. But now there are many paranoid schizophrenias because all these these guys that are graduating from college that are readin' all these books, anything they can't understand is a paranoid schizophrenia.

If you spit in my face and smack me in the mouth and throw me into solitary confinement for nothing... what do you think's gonna happen when i get out of here?

The Charlie Manson that you've created, that's not me. That's only an illusion in your minds, it hasn't got anything to do with me.

In fact, it makes me mad when someone kills snakes or dogs or cats or horses. I don't even like to eat meat - that is how much I am against killing...

To get yourself together you need not to even think there is anyone else in this world. I don't need to look down on, or get off on, or get over on. The hardest thing to overcome is our own lies, confusion and our jealousy

Each night as you sleep I destroy the world.

Sanity is a small box; insanity is everything.

I am the man in the mirror, anything you see in me is in you, I am you, and when you can admit that you will be free. I am just a mirror.

There's nothing wrong with being incompetent. It just means you don't have to do as much.

You can take a pile of rocks and use them to build a house, or you can take the same pile and start a war. Tell children not to throw rocks, make rules against picking up rocks, and then make them mad. Keep projecting what not to do and you make the thought in their brains of what can and will be done.

I play music. People are affected by the music I play. That doesn't mean I direct traffic! That doesn't mean I put a knife in anybody's hand and tell 'em to go kill somebody!

The truth is ugly, so we put our prophets in prison.