Tommy Chong Quotations

Cigarettes, I won't do cigarettes, nicotine will kill ya.

My incarceration was actually a positive thing from the beginning. I needed a gimmick to get my act going again, it gave me material.

I never did smoke that much pot; never was a big pothead.

You look at Cheney, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and Bush - if you saw them on Halloween, they wouldn't need a costume. You'd give them a treat and compliment them on what great-looking demons they were. They are demons. There's no doubt about it.

The smartest billionaires I know never finished high school. I got my degree and my doctorate on the street and an advanced degree in jail.

Religion is run by thought police. 'Obey. Listen. This is what you do. Don't ask questions. Go die for your country.' The spirituality says, 'Okay, you can die for your country, but know what you're doing while you're doing it.'

When they put me in jail, that's when they turned me into an activist. Up until the time I went to jail, I was just a comedian.

I'm just glad I can make a difference in someone's life.

Everything that happens to me is very cosmic.

We won a contest at the teen fair in Vancouver and the first prize was a recording contract and we recorded at a radio station on the stairway, and we did a record and it got put out.

Awakening your spiritual side is really what artists do. When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world.

A lot of prophets have gone to jail.

Comedy is the ultimate truth. Jazz is hitting the notes that that no one else would hit, and comedy is saying words that no one else would say.

The GRAMMY was a huge deal. It's the height of any musical career.

But you can't exercise and be high. It's impossible.

Life, especially in America, is ruled by corporations.

I've been a good boy, I've never really been convicted of serious crime.

You can't become a dictator through checks and balances.

Cheech and I used to call ourselves musicians; we never called ourselves comedians. We were musicians that were funny.

To be in a situation where you have no rights whatsoever is something I wish everybody could experience. People's attitudes would change. It would be a better place.

Unfortunately, the American justice system is just riddled with lies and inconsistencies.

People try to put ownership on things: 'That's mine, that's my joke.' No such thing. Like if you tripped or stumbled and people go, 'Oh, that's Charlie Chaplin.' You know what I mean? You can't own a joke. You can be the guy that tells it the best, but you can't own a joke. Nowhere can you own a laugh.

Every time I get tested, I ask questions about it, and I watch how they do it.

Activism, to me, I don't know if it really works. It may work for somebody else, but it does not work for me.

I love to meet my fans, and after every show I usually hang out for a few hours, talking to my fans, signing autographs, and selling T-shirts.

Maybe once in a while, you know, after a hard day of shooting or something like that, I'd kick back.

One night all the James Brown band was playing on stage and I look in the back and I could see Mick Jagger and Keith Richards trying to get in the club and they couldn't get in cause it was to crowded.

I was about sixteen when I discovered that music could get you laid, so I got into music boy, didn't matter what you looked like either, you could be a geeky looking guy but if you played music, whoa, you'd get the girls.

The trouble when you're doing something illegal is that you know what you're doing. You're lying to your parents, you're lying to your kids. The only person you can't lie to is yourself.

Any excuse to live in New York and do art. Has to be one of the most rewarding experiences in the world.

There's a hierarchy in prison, and I was right at the top.

You know, I left the country when Reagan got in; I went to France.

If I don't get paid I'm going to take a whole lot of Marshall amps home with me on the plane.

No. Maceo played sax, didn't he, well they used to sit in.

The Shades never recorded anything, Little Daddy and the Bachelors recorded a couple of records, ya.

Well I don't know, I might have lost my citizenship, I don't think you can lose your citizenship though.

Well, I had an after hours club in Vancouver and when any of the Motown acts would call.

I used to joke for years that I was a black man. I adopted the black culture, the black race. I married a black woman, and I had black kids. I always considered myself a 'brother.'

Jail was probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me.

Well, I started out as a musician, so when I was about 10 years old, I was already in a band.

When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world. The spirits whisper the ideas in your brain and prod you along. They're the ones that are really happy.

I know the musical world as well as I know the comedy world.

I know, because I tried all sorts of ways of being in character, and the best way is to be totally straight.

I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.

'That '70s Show' was one of the highlights of my life. I didn't expect to be on it as long as I was.

The funny thing is, Dennis Miller got me back into comedy.

The way jazz works is that we take a theme, and then we write using the same structure, same chord changes, and then we can do different tunes.

They just wanted to show the entertainment world that we're vulnerable.

What made me a comedian was that I wasn't really a songwriter, I was more of a poet.

Look what happened to me for a bong,

Music has always been a big part of Cheech & Chong's career, so it's just natural. You know, I was a musician before I met Cheech and had a record with Motown, and so I've got the cred.

I don't think you could find anybody who hasn't tried marijuana, and I take a lot of credit for that. They're going to have to change their policy.

Just recently up in Utah, some guy got 55 years for selling an ounce of pot to an undercover agent.

I was the original guy that started that group, Bobby Taylor was, I started off with a group called The Shades we were in Calgary.

You know, I left the country when Reagan got in; I went to France. And when George Bush Jr. got in, my instincts told me it was time to go - I'd felt that we had grown above that, you know?

Ya, we had a number one record, ya we, there's a lot of history there, we uh, we discovered the Jackson Five, opening for us one place.

But on the other hand, pot is the best recreational substance for teenagers, athletes, people who have naturally high adrenaline.

The thing is about Cheech & Chong, we've brought more families together than Dr. Phil.

I never had a criminal record. They were kinda banking on the fact that I was dirty as can be.

More than anything, the weed really helped with my mental state, because marijuana works on the brain. And if anything, it soothes the brain.

You know that old joke about potheads having bad memories? Well, the bad memories are like pain, discomfort, and fear. So you lose all that, and the body reacts by healing faster and stronger.

It's like love making, the foreplay is the biggest part, the same thing as comedy. If you can frame your show in such a way that the funny jokes become funnier.

By making marijuana illegal, the agricultural people can't grab hold of it like they did with corn and wheat. So those companies are scrambling around trying to get hold of it, but they can't, because it's a cottage industry, and it will always be a cottage industry. Because the minute the big companies try to make it their own, like they did with soybeans...like Monsanto, they put their own patent on seeds, and you can't do that with marijuana.

There's the exciting part about comedy - if you catch an act just before they go mainstream, that's the best. After they hit the mainstream, everything gets watered down a little bit.

As soon as I discovered weightlifting, all I wanted to do - my plan in life - was to work out, lay on the beach, and get high... smoke dope. And that's really what I'm doing.

We see the corrupt prison system, we see the corrupt police system, we see the corruption in the government, from the top on down. You know, it's built based on lies. However, the marijuana industry itself, because it was an underground industry, showed us the way we could exist on this planet.

Now the [smartphone] has freed everybody, and so everybody gets better. No matter what you say, people will check you out on their phone.

Okay, you can die for your country, but know what you're doing while you're doing it.

There is an intelligence factor that works with the spoken word. With words, you have to understand meaning and nuances and things like that. You have to be able to relate...but with music it's just music.

Look at all the drug busts all over the country. There must be an audience there somewhere. My feeling is that if we're losing the war on drugs, let's do a movie for the enemy.

We survived Nixon and Reagan and George Bush, and so we can survive anything that comes along.

People didn't relate to me as being Chinese or white, just being a hippie, a long-haired hippie.

Once you're a felon you're a target.

You got a bag of pot, there's someone who wants to buy it from you. So in a weird way, marijuana has [become] and is becoming the new currency of the world.

I converted a family-owned strip club into an improvisational acting theater.

I'd rather have my kid smoking pot than drinking.

I was more of a weightlifter.

I smoke a little pot, every day, and I'm healthy as can be.

I've always known, all my life, that I was going to be something special. I never knew what it was, but I always had that feeling. I think my mother installed it when I was a little guy.

Marijuana has become like currency. Anytime you grow a crop like marijuana, or wheat, or corn, or anything that people consume on a daily basis, you're [getting] into a huge economic area.

I'm as clean as a whistle.

I've always been into improvisation.

I'm dancing tango, and I'm playing golf, and I'm quite active, you know, and for my age and everything, and what I've gone through, I'm very happy.

Musicians can travel all over the world and have an audience, because there's no language barrier.

Marijuana is a proven medicine.

Because the pot takes the edge off the adrenaline, and it also clears your mind of it, and then you can see things a lot clearer.

I do have a plan for the country [the USA]. It needs education. And there should be drug education - only people should be taught how to smoke pot, because even potheads don't know how to smoke pot. I've evolved into not only an activist, but an educator. I want to show people how, when, and why they should smoke pot.

Boredom is a disease, too.

I look on everything with a very optimistic eye. Because I'm a body builder by trade, you know, that was my intent all my life.

I've always believed in the concept of retirement. I retired for the first time at age 18 ... from school. To me, retirement means doing what you want to do without worrying about getting paid for it.

You can smoke marijuana, you can eat it, you can wear it, it's a perfect plant!

Marijuana grows everywhere in the world. And it really is currency, if you think about it.

Something good always happens at 4:20 for me.

When Mexicans sneak across the border, they're more apt to carry a bag of pot then they are a fistful of money. Because the pot can be exchanged for money, anywhere in America. Anywhere in the world!

So (legalizing marijuana) means a lot more to me than just being able to smoke a joint without being arrested.

The good thing about poverty is it keeps you from getting in trouble because if you can't afford drugs, people will stop giving them to you very quickly. So, being poor really helps - it's the success that kills you.

And I don't really drink alot of booze, alcohol will kill ya... but I smoke all the pot I can find, I don't smoke it all at once, I just do a little bit at a time, and I uh, I used to take acid but I quit around 1971.

Whenever I do anything, I need to take 15 or 20 minutes, maybe longer, to regroup.

There's a big shift in our whole way of living, and it started maybe 10 years ago when [smartphones] came into existence. Up until then, we were at the mercy of the press, and so-called experts that would tell us what to think and how to think.

If more people were stoned there would be less violence in the world.