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Charles Manson - Quotes throughout the years concerning the trial and media
“Had you let us put
on a defense, we could’ve explained to you why it happened.”
- Charles Manson, 1989 (Source: Penny Daniels interview)
“I don’t know
all the things you know, but you don’t know the things I know either, and I
don’t disrespect you and take your rights. So give me my fucking rights. You
can’t fool me. You can’t trick me. I didn’t have nothing to do with killing
those people, period. I’ve told you that all the way down the line. I wasn’t
around anyone when they were killed. I’m not saying I’m not capable of doing it
myself, but I’m just saying this: I did not do that. And I could’ve proved it
in a court of law.”
- Charles Manson,
1997 (Source: Parole Hearing)
“I didn’t push them
people to do nothing. Them people did what they wanted to do. I didn’t make no
one lay down for anything. If they didn’t want to lay down they didn’t lay
down. I had a confederate sword and I hung it in the kitchen. I said “don’t
lie. If you like this ranch don’t lie. If you lie, this sword might jump off
and come get you.” But I didn’t have anything to do with directing traffic. I
don’t know how many times, how many ways it can be said.”
- Charles Manson,
1994 (Source: Bill Murphy)
“I’ve done nothing
I’m ashamed of. Nothing I couldn’t face God with. I wouldn’t kill a bug.”
- Charles Manson,
1987 (Source: Life Magazine interview)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1985 (Source: Nuell Emmons interview)
“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!” - Charles Manson, 2004 (Source: Crime Magazine)
“In the penitentiary
you learn this: don’t lie. Don’t lie, man. If someone catches you in a lie you
leave yourself open to get snuffed. And all my life I lived in that eye of:
tell the truth. Pay your debts. Don’t get involved in other people’s business.
Do your number, do your time. And you
learn to stand on your own. So, I am walking and standing on my own. People see me standing on my own and not too
many people in your world can do that. And I don’t realize that at that
particular time. I don’t realize how weak and mindless you people are.”
- Charles Manson,
1986 (Source: Charlie Rose)
“I feel that it’s
pitiful. Pitiful that society has created such a situation. First of all, I
ain’t got a family. There never was a family. That’s a product of the
prosecuting attorney’s imagination.
Second, it’s pitiful
that the parents aren’t closer to their kids so their children wouldn’t be
looking for something outside of their homes for something to join, or someone
to follow.
I didn’t produce
these kids. They are a product of their parents. I didn’t recruit them, it was
the other way around. I came out of prison a child and I was looking for
guidance and a way to live. The children took me in. Through them I learned how to maneuver and
exist in the streets without starving. They taught me what love and freedom was
because I had never experienced either. At some point, I may have become a
pivotal person to them, some place to always return to.”
- Charles Manson,
1980 (Source: Sarasota Herald)
“I treat everyone
just like I would myself. If you treat me right, I’ll treat you right.”
- Charles Manson,
1991 (Source: Ron Reagan Jr. interview)
“People want to buy
that insanity. They don’t want the truth. They want fear, they want violence,
they want sex and drugs and guns.”
- Charles Manson,
1992 (Source: Michal Ben Horin interview)
Manson: Just because you’re convicted in a courtroom
doesn’t mean you’re guilty of something.
Snyder: What does mean you’re guilty?
Manson: When you know you’re guilty.
Snyder: And how do you feel about yourself? Tell me
about that.
Manson: I feel pretty good. All this cult, all this
hockus pockus stuff you guys are playing, I don’t know nothing about all of
that.
Snyder: You know nothing about something called
“Helter Skelter”?
Manson: Yea, I know about helter skelter. It was a
song that some people sang, and some other kids picked it up in their minds.
You delt the hand down there in L.A., you and that press, you and that L.A.
Times.You dealt the hand. You put me on Life Magazine and had me
convicted before I walked in the courtroom. You had what people wanted to buy.
If they wanted to buy it, they didn’t give a damn if they had to convict the
district attorney. They would’ve convicted the whole building to get that
dollar bill going there, they had big bucks going there, they made twenty seven
million thousand hundred billion…. I’m bummin’ ten or fifteen dollars from a
friend here.
- Charles Manson,
1981 (Source: Tom Snyder)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1987 (Source: Life)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1989 (Source: Penny Daniels
interview)
“How could I lead a
group whose very foundation was based on each person’s individuality? I hated
being controlled. I hate the type of person who have to be in control, so how
could I be the controller? That’s insane, man. The people who said that are the
crazy ones, not me.”
- Charles
Manson, 1977 (Source: Taming the Beast)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1994 (Source: Diane Sawyer)
“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.”
- Charles Manson, Jan
30, 1970 (Source: LA Free Press)
“If it wasn’t for the
publicity, I would’ve been out of here and gone a long time ago.”
- Charles Manson (Source: ManSon: Menschensohn documentary)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1978 (Source: First Parole Hearing)
“So, Tex’s got a little problem and he gives me his gun; he
can’t deal with it, so I gotta go deal with his problem. I had to go shoot
somebody for him, because he’s too much of a coward. He’s laying up underneath
the bed with it. I had to shoot Lotsapoppa; some guy in the drug world. I had
to go down and take care of some business that was not my business. So Tex owed
me one. I said, “Every time I stand up for you, brother, I got to face your
life and your death. I’m tired of carrying you on my back.” I threw him the gun
and I said, “Now you owe me one. And if you don’t pay me when you owe me, I
will pay you what you owe me.” So, I had to go into another face and playact.
So when my brother gets busted and my brother is in jail, I tell Tex, “Go pay
him what you owe me. However you do it, you do it.”
- Charles Manson,
1986 (Source: Charlie Rose)
“I did not teach Tex.
I told Tex to do what you think is right and ride your own beef. All that
confusion at the Ranch was from Tex. I didn’t show Tex how to burn people,
someone else taught him that. Tex was trying to be Manson in his mother’s body
and Tex took a knife and a gun that someone else showed him how to use. So, why
was Manson at the top when Tex was the man at the top with the knife and with
the gun and with the will?”
- Charles Manson,
1985 (Source: Vacaville Reporter)
“With Danny DeCarlo’s
testimony. He said that I hate black men, and he said that we thought alike,
that him and I was a lot alike in our thinking. But actually all I ever did
with Danny DeCarlo or any other human being was reflect himself back at himself.
If he said he did not like the black man, I would say, “Okay.” I had better
sense than tell him I did not dislike the black man. I just listened to him and
I would react to his statement. So
consequently he would drink another beer and walk off and pat me on the back
and he would say to himself, “Charlie thinks like I do.” But actually he does
not know how Charlie thinks because Charlie has never projected himself.”
- Charles Manson, 1970 (Source: Trial Testimony)
“What do the animals
do in the zoo? That’s the same thing that I do in my cell. I play with myself.
I make little string dolls. I talk to roaches. I’m in jail for nine counts of
murder, and I didn’t do it. I’m in solitary confinement, may I add.”
- Charles Manson,
1985 (Source: High Society)
“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.”
- Charles Manson (Source: 1992 parole hearing)
“How the hell did I
brainwash 35 girls in less than a year? That’s impossible. You’re making me out
to do the impossible. You don’t understand you are making me a legend.”
- Charles Manson,
1988 (Source: Geraldo)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1981 (Source: Tom Snyder)
“Gary sold some dope to some bad people. He sold some drugs
that cost Beausoleil’s wife to lose her baby. He was an informant for the
government, he was playing all kinds of treacherous games that he shouldn’t
have been playing. See, when you’re in the underworld, you gotta be truthful.
If you lie and you’re faking and you’re snitching, and it catches up with you,
it bites you. You do it to yourself.”
- Charles Manson,
talking about Gary Hinman, 1994 (Source: Bill Murphy interview, BBC)
“I walked with Tex,
but when Tex took out his knife and went out for so and so, I said “excuse me,
I gotta go to the canteen and get some ice cream.” Don’t judge me behind what
Tex did. If you kill somebody, you’ve killed yourself. Because if you live by
that gun and you live by that knife, and you kill by that gun and you kill by
that knife, then you got no turns coming at the bitch table if it’s your turn
to die from that gun and that knife.”
- Charles Manson,
1991 (Source: Ronald Reagan, Jr.)
“Let me tell you
something, and here’s the truth: the girls didn’t kill anyone. I’m telling you,
the girls didn’t kill anyone… Tex killed ‘em. Tex went stone crazy and killed anybody in his
path.”
- Charles Manson
(Source: ManSon:
Menschensohn, German documentary)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1992 (Source: Bill Stout)
“I’m supposed to be
responsible for making all these people do all these things. I’m supposed to
have this awesome power to move people to destruction and have the power of the
presidency, that I can put troops in the field and have them go out and fight
and die and take other peoples lives, for me. I’m a whole government by myself.
‘Convicted to be that. That’s not me.”
- Charles Manson,
1985 (Source: KALX)
“I’ve been kept in
mental wards, nut wards; I’ve been beaten, drugged, and have lost track of the
times I’ve been handcuffed to the bars or left to be killed. Inmates have told
me that doctors and other CDC staff have tried to have me killed by telling
them lies about me killing pregnant women and eating their unborn babies, or
have implied threats to their personal safety along with promises of paroles
and other favors. I have witnesses to all I say but no court will touch it
because they broke their laws to put me back in prison, and each day they break
all the laws by keeping me. They violate every human right in the book, yet
they keep preaching to the world as if they had no sins and were all good
guys.”
- Charles Manson (Source: 1986 parole hearing)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1992 (Source: Parole Hearing)
I think a hearing
should be called so we could get these very same people who wrote these
articles and find out from them where they get their information to write the
articles, who feeds them the information to write the articles. The media is
used by the District Attorney to try a man before, trial.”
- Charles Manson,
February 16, 1970 (Source: Pretrial
Transcripts)
“I’m in jail because
people wanna keep me in jail. It ain’t got nothing to do with the law.”
- Charles Manson,
1992 (Source: Michal Ben Horin interview)
“You get back what
you put out, is that right or wrong? If you don’t believe in god, you believe
in the balance of karma, the balance of your own will. The balance of what you
know to be truth, you know. Whatever you do is on you. You got to be judged by
your god. Don’t judge me, man, behind what Tex did.”
- Charles Manson,
1991 (Source: Ron Reagan Jr.
interview)
“When Tex took out
his knife and went after someone, I walked the line, and got out of his
way.”
- Charles Manson,
1991 (Source: Ron Reagan Jr.
interview)
“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.”
- Charles Manson,
1970 (Source: CBS trial coverage)
“You sat here for
nineteen days questioning that girl. She got immunity on seven counts of
murder. You set her up to be a hero, and
that is your woman. That is the thing that you worship.
You set this woman up
here to testify against me. And she tells you a sad story. How she has only
taken every narcotic that is possible to take. How she has only stolen, lied,
cheated and done everything that you have got there in that book.
But it is okay. She
is telling the truth now. She wouldn’t have any ulterior motive like immunity
for seven counts of murder. Why a woman
would stand up and project herself into a man and say, “Actually he never told
me anything, but I knew it all came from him.”
Am I to be found
guilty on her assumption?”
- Charles
Manson, November 19, 1970 (Source: Trial Testimony)
“Then I look at the
facts that you have brought in front of this court and I look at the twelve
facts that are looking at me and judging me. If I were to judge them, what
scale would that balance? Would the scale balance if I was to turn and judge
you? How would you feel if I were to judge you? Could I judge you? I can only
judge you if you try to judge me. That is the fact.
Mr. Bugliosi is a
hard-driving prosecutor, with a polished education. Semantics, words. He is a
genius. He has got everything that every lawyer would want to have except one
thing: a case. He doesn’t have a case.
Were I allowed to
defend myself, I could have proven this to you. I could have called witnesses
and showed you how these things lay, and I could have presented my
picture. There are so many aspects to
this case that could be dug into and a lot of truth could be brought up, a lot
of understanding could be reached. It is
a pretty hideous thing to look at seven bodies, one hundred and two stab
wounds. The prosecutor, or the doctor,
gets up and he shows how all the different stab wounds are one way, and then
how all the different stab wounds are another way; but they are the same stab
wounds in another direction.
They put the hideous
bodies on display and they say: “If he gets out see what will happen to you.”
Implying it. I am not saying he did this. This is implied. A lot of diagrams
are actually in my opinion senseless to the case. You projected fear. You projected fear. You
made me a monster and I have to live with that the rest of my life because I
cannot fight this case. If I could fight this case and I could present this
case, I would take that monster back and I would take that fear back. Then you
could find something else to put your fear on, because it’s all your fear.”
- Charles Manson,
November 19, 1970 (Source: Trial
Testimony)
Geraldo: Susan Atkins comes home to you with bloody hands.
Charles Manson: Yeah.
Geraldo: She says “Charlie, look what I have done.”
Charles Manson: Yeah. She said “I give you the world. I just
killed myself and I give you the world.”
Geraldo: So, how did you react?
Charles Manson: I said “You dumb fucking cunt, I already had
the world. You just put me back in jail again.” That’s what she did, she put me
right back in jail.
Geraldo: How did she react?
Charles Manson: Susan followed me around and she was always
trouble. She would steal, she would lie, she would do all kinds of crazy
things.
(Source: Geraldo
interview, 1988)
“The ‘Helter Skelter’
that the D.A. put on me was not the ‘Helter Skelter’ I was— it’s not the same.
In other words, the D.A. took words from anyone who would tell and pieced them
together with his own
imagination. […]
They try and put me
at the top and I wasn’t at the top. Them kids were the ones I followed. But I knew everything. I always knew
everything. I knew what the kids were doing but listen to me: it is not my
profession to tell people what to do and to tell the law what they have done.
[…]
Tex owed me. Watson
would come for a week then leave for a month and come back with all these
people after him and wants me to hide him. I’d have to go through his changes and
fight his problems. In other words, Tex needed money and he did what he did [to
Lotsapoppa], and I got a call so I was involved. I told him that the money he
took was mine because I had to fight his problem. […]
All of them kids did
what they did for their own problems. If Tex went to the top of the hill to get
money that’s not my affair. Susie did
just like Tex. She’d always leave and come back with some asshole on her ass
that I’d have to cut off of her.”
- Charles Manson,
2010 (Source: 2010 conversation)
“You’ve convicted me
for being the motivating force behind your children, and some of the them I
hardly even known. I only knew Linda Kasabian— I seen her three times in my
life — maybe two minutes in my whole life I seen the broad. She come up to the
ranch for about a week.
I wasn’t thinking
about sending her down to be no troops about saving nothing — about stopping
nothing.”
- Charles Manson, 1988 (Source: Geraldo)
“People said I was a leader. Here’s the kind of leader I was. I made sure toilets were clean. I made sure the animals were fed. Any sores on the horses? I’d heal them. Anything need fixing? I’d fix it. I was always the one to do everything nobody wanted to do. Cats need feeding? I’d feed them. When it was cold, I was always the last one to get a blanket.” - Charles Manson, 1970 (Source:
Rolling Stone)
“I might be a danger
to your stupidity and I’m a danger to your ignorance, but I’m not a danger to
intelligent life forms. I’m not a danger to the people who want to exist on the
planet. I’m not a danger to farmers, I’m not a danger to poor people, I’m not a
danger to soldiers who don’t want to hurt nobody, who don’t wanna go to
war.”
- Charles Manson, 2011 (Source: Vanity Fair Spain)
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