Rastafarian Quotes

I don’t like big weddings.” Her panic is clear. “All those people make me nervous. I’ll mess up the vows and say something inappropriate.” “It doesn’t have to be big. It can be just the two of us if you want. We can wait until next summer—or the one after if a year isn’t long enough. We can get married up here by a justice of the peace on the end of the dock at sunset. A damn Rastafarian can perform the ceremony if that’s what you want. I don’t care about the wedding part. All I want to be is connected to you in the most significant way possible. I want you as my wife.

The world’s full of people with unusual beliefs, Julia. Scientologists, Rastafarians, Catholics, Moonies, Mormons, Baptists, Tories, dentists, captains of industry—every madness has its cheerleader. The asylums and parliament are crammed full of delusionists, and only a madman would want to eliminate them.

The growing policy-reform movement is a broad church. It includes everyone from ganja-smoking Rastafarians to free-market fundamentalists and all in between. There are socialists who think the drug war hurts the poor, capitalists who see a business opportunity, liberals who defend the right to choose, and fiscal conservatives who complain America is spending $40 billion a year on the War on Drugs rather than making a few billion taxing it. The movement can’t agree on much other than that the present policy doesn’t work. People disagree on whether legalized drugs should be controlled by the state, by corporations, by small businessmen, or by grow-your-own farmers, and on whether they should be advertised, taxed, or just handed out free in white boxes to addicts.

Emperor Haile Selassie was certainly a defining figure in both Ethiopian and African history, and as Rastafarians revere Haile Selassie as the returned messiah, it’s possible that the routes of Rastafarianism are deep-seated in the Queen of Sheba. Trip on that! A queen who was part Genie, or Djinn, is possibly the focus of Rastafarianism

Then Ghana, and the smell of Ghana, a contradiction, a cracked clay pot: the smell of dryness, wetness, both, the damp of earth and dry of dust. The airport. Bodies pushing, pulling, shouting, begging, touching, breathing. He'd forgotten the bodies. The proximity of bodies. In America the bodies were distant. The warmth of it ...... Why had he hated this view? Of this beach, of the backs of these fishermen, glistening brown, of the long wooden boats, evangelical names in bright tricolor paint on their splintering sides, Black Star Jesus, Jah Reign, Christ the Fisher of Men, in the red, yellow, green of the national flag and the national spirit of open-source ethos, this mixing of Anglican, Rastafarian, Ghanaian? What was there to hate in this? There was only openness. As far as he could see. A cheerful openness. An innocence. An innocent beach on the road to Kokrobite at seven A.M. November 1975, little country lurching, cheerful, unaware, to revolution. Little taxi lurching, blasting revolution, to grief.

The only thing more pitiful than a middle-aged punk is a white Rastafarian. I did meet one of those once, and he was lonelier than I was.

Rastafarianism is bringing black people back to the so-called promised land. The bodies live in Africa, but the mentalities are somewhere in the Middle East.

Simplicity matters. Especially when it comes to the muscle memory of boxing. That is perhaps rule number one. Simplicity works. Simplicity is repetition. Repetition is function. Boil function down to one action, maybe two. Left or right. Simplicity. Simplicity is really the hardest thing.

Ruislip, the Fop's opponent, resembled a bad dream one might have if one fell asleep watching sumo wrestling on the television with a Bob Marley record playing in the background. He was a huge Rastafarian who looked like nothing so much as an obese and enormous baby.

Ruislip, the Fop’s opponent, looked like the kind of dream one might have if one fell asleep watching sumo wrestling on the television with a Bob Marley record playing in the background. He was a huge Rastafarian who looked like nothing so much as an obese and enormous baby.

So this is the Sierras, eh?” he said, looking out over the dark lake. “All that time growing up I never made it up here before.” “It’s the Range of Light,” I said, passing the joint back to him. “That’s what John Muir called it. I can see why. I’ve never seen light like I have out here. All the sunsets and sunrises against the mountains.” “You’re on a spirit walk, aren’t you?” Paco said, staring into the fire. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you could call it that.” “That’s what it is,” he said, looking at me intensely. He stood. “I’ve got something I want to give you.” He went to the back of the truck and returned with a T-shirt. He handed it to me and I held it up. On the front was a giant picture of Bob Marley, his dreadlocks surrounded by images of electric guitars and pre-Columbian effigies in profile. On the back was a picture of Haile Selassie, the man Rastafarians thought was God incarnate, rimmed by a red and green and gold swirl. “That is a sacred shirt,” Paco said as I studied it by the firelight. “I want you to have it because I can see that you walk with the spirits of the animals, with the spirits of the earth and the sky.” I nodded, silenced by emotion and the half-drunk

Furthermore, in Revelation 17:5 we find this proclamation: “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” This, the Rastas say, is the world of wretched cities into which the poor Ethiopian is cast, not unlike Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to come forth, unscathed by flame. To come out pure. To have the faith to be untouched by the blasphemy of the world’s wrongdoing.

One of the gunmen in the room, ending his call to his wife, and seeing me typing, came across and shook my hand. “You going to make a lot of money off this story!” the gunman with the Rastafarian hairstyle said. His pump-action shotgun was slung in the crook of his arm. He was smiling. “Yeah”, I said. “If I get out of here alive.” “You all right, you going to be all right”, he said, laughing. But you see me? I don’t know too much about my future right now.” “Everybody’s going to be all right,” I said. He laughed again. And reached into his back pocket and came out with a little white slip of paper in his hand. “I don’t know about me,” he said, smiling. “But if you write the story and make a lot of money, maybe you could get these things for the wife for me.” He handed me the slip of paper. On it, in block letters, was an itemized list: TV SET VIDEO SET WASHING MACHINE FRIDGE For a moment I shook my head in bewilderment, looking at that list. But he was laughing again and saying: “So if you make a lot of money off your book, get those things for the wife for me, nuh.” I said: “Sure.” I pocketed the note and walked away, flooded by nausea, thinking: so this is what he’s in it for, this young Trinidadian with the Rasta hairdo, the fake army camouflage shirt and pants tucked into his big soldier-looking black boots, with the wicked-looking shotgun crooked in his arm. A free television set. A video set. A washing machine. A fridge.

by insisting on repatriation, the Rastafarian is liable to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

Not every Rasta knows who he is, but eventually he will have no choice but to know. Once he realizes who he is and what he has been assigned to do, he has no choice but to embrace this divine gift. This is why to some it may appear a person has "become a Rasta" and that they are entering a "phase" of life. The truth of the matter is, natural-born Rasta has always been and will always be Rastafari. Born Rasta is here to share the love of Jah, and to share the light so that those who seek spiritual truth can also follow this way of life.

A GUIDE TO DIFFERENT RELIGIONS Taoism: Shit happens. Zen: What is the sound of shit happening? Hinduism: This shit's happened before. Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn't really shit. Islam: If shit happens, it's the will of Allah. Protestantism: Shit happens because we don't work hard enough. Catholicism: Shit happens because we are bad. Christian Fundamentalism: Shit happens because the Bible says so. Jehovah's Witness: Knock, knock. 'Shit happens." Judaism: Why does shit always happen to us? Agnosticism: We don't know shit. Atheism: No shit. Hare Krishna: Shit happens - rama rama ding ding. Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit.

As his breath froze in his lungs, Lucas realized that the thing under Boog’s bed might well have been the shadow Three Ravens Perez had seen hunting Rachel and Jared in his visions, the same stinking shadow he’d met in his sleep. It was the evil that hated to let little boys sleep and forced them to grow up without their mothers or didn’t allow them to grow up at all. Evil was stalking him, as always. Evil, most likely, would not be far behind. journey Zion me wan go home, Zion me wan go home, Oh, oh, Zion me wan go home. —Rastafarian chant

perhaps she should get a dreadlock wig in keeping with her new identity, become one of those Rastafarians and sell drugs

It makes no difference whether you’re disarmed and your rights trampled by Marxists or Martians, rightists or Rastafarians. Our Constitution’s framers were not only smart but also wise. They recognized any person or element seeking to enslave the free citizens of the new Republic must first disarm them of effective weaponry. The Second Amendment was written to safeguard against tyranny — not against any particular polity or person. Someone who favors a “progressive socialist” government should be just as vehemently opposed to infringement of their right to bear arms as one who might favor government by military junta.

I was happy for him. He did not have a sunken molue in his brain. Rastafarians and diseased children didn’t torment him. He hadn’t been a salesman of nightmares- he had only ever been their administrator.

Cannabis serves not only as an important sacrament for Hindu mendicants, but also for Islamic Sufis, Chinese Daoists, members of African dagga cults, and Jamaican Rastafarians.

A GUIDE TO DIFFERENT RELIGIONS Taoism: Shit happens. Zen: What is the sound of shit happening? Hinduism: This shit's happened before. Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn't really shit. Islam: If shit happens, it's the will of Allah. Protestantism: Shit happens because we don't work hard enough. Catholicism: Shit happens because we are bad. Christian Fundamentalism: Shit happens because the Bible says so. Jehovah's Witness: Knock, knock. 'Shit happens." Judaism: Why does shit always happen to us? Agnosticism: We don't know shit. Atheism: No shit. Hare Krishna: Shit happens - rama rama ding ding. Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit. - Mitchell Symons

Now I’m no art critic, but in a time seen as a bridge between the late middle ages and the early renaissance, where the church played such a substantial part in the day to day running of people's lives, Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, which is painted on oak with a square middle panel flanked by two doors that close over the centre like shutters, is rather racy. When the outer shutters are folded over they show a grisaille painting of the earth during creation. But it’s the three scenes of the inner triptych that fascinate me. If you’re unfamiliar with the painting, I’ll do my best to describe it for you. Apologies in advance if I miss anything out. It’s regular sort of stuff, you know, naked women being fondled by demons, a bloke being kissed by a pig dressed as a nun, another bloke being eaten by some kind of story book character while loads of blackbirds fly out of his arse, a couple locked in a glass sphere and – let’s not beat about the Bosch here – locked in each other’s embrace as well. There are loads of people feeding each other fruit, doing handstands, hatching out of eggs, climbing up ladders to get inside the bodies of other people and looking at demon’s arses. There’s a couple getting caught shagging by giant birds, and a white bloke and a black Rastafarian with ‘locks (400 years before the Rastafari movement was founded) about to have a snog. You’ve got God giving Eve to a very puny-looking, limp-dicked Adam, and there’s a bunch of people sitting around a table inside the body of another bloke while an old woman fills up on wine from a decent-sized barrel while a kind of giant metal face pukes out loads of naked blokes who go running into a trumpet and another bloke being fed a cherry by a giant bird while a white bloke shows a black lady something in the sky. It’s all going on! There's loads of those ‘living dead’ mateys walking about, and a bloke carrying giant grapes past a topless girl with, it has to be said, pretty decent tits. She’s balancing a giant dice on her head while doing something strange to another bloke’s arse while a rabbit in clothes walks past. You can’t see what she’s doing because there’s a table in the way but beside them is a serpent-type creature with just one massive boob and a pretty pert nipple. One huge tit the size of his chest! Of all things, he’s holding a backgammon board up in the air. I’d say Bosch was a tit man, wouldn’t you? But there’s more. There’s a crowd of naked girls – black & white - in a water pool, all balancing cherries on their heads; read into that what you will. There are just LOADS of naked women in this water pool, including one of the black girls who’s balancing a peacock on her head. There are dozens of nudists riding horses around them in a circle. Some are sharing the same horse, so I must admit that in places it appears to be a little intimate. And now what have we got! There’s a couple cavorting inside a giant shell which is being carried on the back of another bloke. Why doesn’t he just put it down and climb in and have a threes-up? There are people with wings, creatures reading books and just more and more nudists. There’s a naked woman lying back, and this other bloke with his face extremely close to her nether regions! What on earth does the blighter think he’s playing at? There’s loads of grey half men-half fish, some balancing red balls on their heads like seals, and another fellow doing a handstand underwater while holding onto his nuts. You’ve got a ball in a river with people climbing all over it, while a bloke inside the ball is touching a lady in what appears to be a very inappropriate manner! There’s a kind of platypus-type fish reading a book underground and Theresa May triggering Article 50 of Brexit (just kidding about the Theresa May bit).

I have also desisted employing the concept of ‘Rastafarianism’, a term I personally abhor which seems to be a source of confusion to outsiders and embarrassment to Rastas themselves. Almost every contemporary commentator on the movement has used this insensitive term without considering the discipline of doctrine and organisation it seems to connote. Even Garvey who did establish a rigorous ideological programme and formal organisation through which to articulate it was not keen on ‘isms’ (M. Garvey, 1967, Vol. 2, p. 334). Ras Tafari most certainly does not warrant the attachment of ‘ism’ to its name.

Vogel also quotes, almost straight, from As You Like It when he comments that “The whole world’s a stage.” Co-director Larry Charles talks about this on the DVD commentary track: “… ‘the whole world is a stage’ – quoting Shakespeare referring to the stage. It’s all play, playing with the reality; the Rastafarian janitor – was it real, was it not, was it a dream?

Ganja is the sacrament of the Rastafarian brotherhood.