I’m a big reader. My kids love reading, and I think it’s important, not just for development but for bonding. You start reading to kids before they can even understand what you’re saying to them, so I look at it as a fundamental tool for connection.
The African-American community still needs to come together as one and stand up for rights of the people and of what’s happening in their culture, their community.
My father’s songs don’t intimidate me; my father’s songs are my songs. My songs are his songs. There’s no intimidation.
‘Master Blaster,’ by Stevie Wonder, is up-tempo and fun, like Stevie himself. Stevie’s always making jokes; he really knows how to put people at ease. He’s one of my inspirations, as a musician and a person.
My father and I had a really good relationship. We’re cool. I am not trying to outdo him or anything like that.
I run four times a week. And I don’t count miles – I don’t do that. I don’t care about that. I care about how I feel, and I run according to how I feel.
I think God surrounds us, in all different manifestations of the energy.
I don’t like to do things for any other reason than it happens spontaneously or there’s something that makes it happen naturally. I don’t like putting down too many plans and trying to do a strategy to get a certain response or a certain effect.
Sometimes my mistakes turn into interesting music because I do things that aren’t supposed to be done.
If African countries can unite and pull resources together, then that will be the best thing we could ever do for the problems in Africa including AIDS.
Love is a positive effect. Love can never have a negative effect, only a positive effect.
My father speaks for himself, through his music.
I was 12 when my father passed, so I didn’t have a father during my teenage years.
I think parents today are looking for meaningful things for their kid. It’s about feeding them something with meaning.
‘She Wolf,’ by Shakira, makes you want to let go of your inhibitions and jam.
I don’t chase what I hear on the radio. I try not to compete with anybody.
It’s hard to say a favorite song of my father’s. I listen to all his stuff – a lot of the old stuff before the ’70s.
I’m inspired to do music. I really can’t stop unless I stop being inspired.
I am a leader, so leaders always get heat. They’re always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat; Bob Marley got heat; Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you’re doing something right.
I don’t fight creativity. I don’t fight against not being creative. If I’m not being creative, I’m not forcing it.
My father loved all different types of music. He wasn’t a snob. He wasn’t a purist.
Success to me does not mean money.
I grew up with coconuts as the main flavor in food in Jamaica. It’s part of our culture.
The people who are teaching religion and not teaching love are missing the message.
Reggae music is not an easy music to like when it comes to the power in society. ‘Cause it talks about changing society. You won’t find it readily accepted.
I want the people who listen to my music to feel the feeling that I feel, to cry the cry that I cry – justice. I want them to feel in their hearts the need for justice.
I’m not a slave to the recording industry. I have the freedom to make an album that I want to make and do it the way I want.
It’s natural that anyone is compared to their father.
As a viewer, I love watching movies. There has to be an emotional connection.
Children are the world’s future, and we need to take care of them like we would any precious resource.
I love running in nature. I don’t like running on the streets, I don’t like running in the city, I don’t like running on the concrete. I love running in nature, so Jamaica provides a lot of that for me.
I don’t believe in other people’s ideas. I have my own ideas.
Even if I wasn’t in music, even if my father was a carpenter, some guy in Jamaica would go ‘You’re just like Bob. You’re just like your father.’ That happens in Jamaica all the time.
Children are not a burden.
Love is cheering and sharing and compassion and giving and receiving. Love is an action thing more than a word thing, that brings comfort or joy or relief to anyone or anything.
Each father wants their sons to be just like them, really.
The idea of who my father is to me is very different than who he is to you, or to the rest of the world.
The solution for mankind is of a spiritual nature. It is not a political or religious solution. It’s the ability to love each other. That’s the only solution I see.
My whole family is spiritual. My grandmother, grand aunt, cousins, they’re all preachers and pastors. Spirituality is a part of my family, from generations ago.
A record is a message, timeless.
Screaming, it’s not me. I tried it before! Action is more my thing. Not talking. It’s hard for me to have word fights, fighting with words. I’d rather just listen.
I never did feel any pressure in Jamaica. You just someone, not nobody big.
Society and the system and politicians don’t want people to be aware of things. They want people to believe what they have to show ’em.
The revolution will come from the people and the willingness to work towards something better, to fight for a better living.
I think the people should have a right to boycott whoever they want to boycott without the government making them into criminals and try to protect corporations from people. They should protect people from corporations.
URGE is a grassroots charity. We organized to get some incubators to give to the hospital for the kids. We donate money to orphanages.
My father was interested in bringing reggae music to the entire world.
I just got into the Beatles a couple years ago, you know, I like it.
I think it’s wrong the way they criminalize herb. There are many more uses than just smoking. Beneficial to mankind.
Social revolutions and group revolutions are good, and we need that, but we also need personal revolution – revolution within ourselves that change who we are as people.
I was in my yard and thought that the tree was a living being. We take trees for granted. We don’t believe they are as much alive as we are.
I follow the universe; I follow G-d. G-d made the sun, and the sun shines on everyone.
In my songs, the sex is all subliminal. It’s subliminal, spiritual.
Children are wonderful, and they add to my whole life.
No matter the bad things that happened in past time, let’s try to live the best we can now.
I’d rather be by myself, really, than have, like, a million posse around me.
I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.
If food is labeled, some people might choose to eat stuff that’s genetically modified. They might decide they love it. But give us a choice.
I’ve spent a lot of time in America since Sept. 11, 2001. Being here, I was noticing that the people, who in the ’60s used to voice their opinions about their rights, are much different today. People are afraid to voice opposition to the government in a mass way.
Kids are an important audience to reach for the future of the planet.
Some of my songs I don’t do on tour because they don’t work well live.
Art is always good. It just depends if you like or not.
Love is more than one thing.
I am not reggae, I am me. I am bigger than the limits that are put on me. It all has to do with the individual journey.
I used to have this little mouse. I buy birds from the pet store and I let them go.
Religion has become so many different things. Religion is an economic thing for some people. Religion is a gun.
I’m not an American, Do they count the votes in America? I haven’t voted in Jamaica either.
I’ve never read one book about my father.
If religion had a good purpose, then man would have created something great. But we’re man: we mess up everything. We mess up nature. We mess up God. We take what is given to us and make it into what we think it should be.
In Jamaica, we eradicated polio many years ago, but there are a lot of kids suffering in Africa still.
Jamaica has problems; America has problems; everywhere has problems.
It’s very important that we instill some respect for the parents. In America especially, the kids are unruly, screaming at Mommy and Daddy, running the show.
The more I grow as an artist, the more I think I become like my father as an artist. The more I diversify, the more I become like my father, which is true to who he was.
The most important thing my father taught me is that every man has to stand up for his rights.
I want to be fulfilled in myself, rather than try to follow exactly in my father’s footsteps.
Using political tools to change social conditions won’t work.
Growing up, music was an important part of my childhood. I see it being just as important in my children and all children’s growth and development, and in a parent’s connection with their children.
Politics, nature, and what is happening all over the world is important to who we are and where we live.
If I’m doing a concert, and I’m having a problem with the audience… I just play a Bob Marley song, and I’m good for the rest of the night.
I’ve been in Africa, America, moving around a lot. It’s helped me to open up my mind. I was born in Jamaica; I’ve lived all my life there and got all I could from Jamaica. But I needed to be somewhere else to grow.
The people don’t run the system; the people are victims of the system. The people choose the leaders thinking that they will help them. But when they turn around, there is no help.
Hemp is a part of the cannabis plant, and it is very useful.
I think my type of personality has all music inside of it, so I am full of music, without even knowing it, without even learning it, without even hearing it.
The long-term study of GMO foods is going on in real time and in real life. Not in a lab.
I’m always in love.
We believe in the almighty and we believe in God and that music is from God and we’re inspired by God to give messages and ideas to people.
I’ve tried body surfing. It’s nice.
I make music that I know that people will enjoy, and balance the ideas and philosophy that we put in music with music that when we play it live, people can move to it and groove to it.
It’s that kind of in-born music thing – I could pick up the guitar and play something. It’s not something I consciously do.
My father, his spirit is with me constantly, and I’m a believer in that world and the world of dreams and that stuff.
I believe we are all connected to other people. I am connected to people who are suffering. We all are.
I think Americans should have a policy of love. That should be the foreign policy, love. Export Love.
There’s more to life than physical and material.
I like Flea, I like him as a musician.
I have found that children are the most open-minded of all my audiences. They are not set in their ways. They are open to ideas.
I’ve opened up more by traveling outside Jamaica. It helps me to grow as a person to be outside of my element; to be on my own in a strange place meeting people.
I am expressing myself truthfully. That is an important thing.
I don’t think we should do anything that should make the people hate the American people more.
My father was like the Old Testament. I am the New Testament. I am part of a new generation. In time, people will realize this.
