Charles Milles Manson is a convict who led the "Manson Family," a quasi-commune that arose in the U.S. state of California in the later 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in the cases which became known as the Tate-LaBianca murders, which members of the group carried out at his instruction.

Sourced

• 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.
  • Interview in Rolling Stone magazine (June 1970)

• 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.
  • Interview in Rolling Stone magazine (June 1970)

• Have you ever seen the coyote in the desert? Watching, tuned in, completely aware. Christ on the cross, the coyote in the desert — it’s the same thing, man. The coyote is beautiful. He moves through the desert delicately, aware of everything, looking around. He hears every sound, smells every smell, sees everything that moves. He’s in a state of total paranoia, and total paranoia is total awareness.
  • Interview in Rolling Stone magazine (June 1970)

• Death is psychosomatic
  • Interview in Rolling Stone magazine (June 1970)

• Rubin, I am not of your world. I've spent all my life in prison. When I was a child I was an orphan and too ugly to be adopted. Now I am too beautiful to be set free.
  • As quoted by Jerry Rubin in recounting his visit with Manson in We Are Everywhere (1971)

• I never thought I was normal, never tried to be normal. Normal runs in that little rut down there. I don’t know nothing about being normal. I‘ve been in jail all my life, man. I lived on the handball court. This guy raised me up. All the men in the joint raised me up, told me what to do, what was right and wrong, told me where to sit down , where to stand up, I just did whatever I was told. You know, and I got to the end of it and I just turned around and said "Wow, far out."
  • Interview with Tom Snyder (1981)

• Well, we’re our own prisons. We're each our own wardens and we do our own times. We get stuck in our own little trips and we kind a judge ourselves the way we do. You know, I can’t judge uh, nobody else, best thing I can do is try to judge myself and live with that. See, what other people do is not really my affair, unless they approach me with it, and want me to do something about it, uh, then I’ll uh take into consideration what has to be done. But other than that I just uh, try to do my number, and do my time.
  • Interview with Tom Snyder (1981)

• Do you feel blame? Are you mad? Uh, do you feel like wolf kabob Roth vantage? Gefrannis booj pooch boo jujube; bear-ramage. Jigiji geeji geeja geeble google. Do you begep flagaggle vaggle veditch-waggle bagga?
  • Charles Manson interview in San Quentin Prison

• [On what he feels he is expected to say] Consider it, I'll tell you like this: I'm going to chop up some more of you mother-fuckers. I'm going to kill as many of you as I can. I'm going to pile you up to the sky. I figure about fifty million of you.
  • Interview with Geraldo Rivera

• Geraldo: How do you feel about the fact that you're going to spend the rest of your life here?
  Manson: The rest of my life where?
  Geraldo: Right here.
  Manson: You guys have been living a thousand illusions, man. The rest of my life where?"
  Geraldo: In prison."
  Manson: In prison? What prison? You got a prison in your mind? You see what I'm saying? You're in prison, son. You're the one that's in jail because you think there is such a thing as a prison. I'm sitting on the ground and a guy comes up and draws a line and he says "You're in prison". I say "Oh, I'm in prison?" and he puts up a big gate and says "You can't get out". I say "Oh, I can't get out?" and he says "Yes", then he dresses people up and walks them back and forth and has them say "We're keeping you locked up" and I say "Oh you are? I didn't have anything else to do anyway."
  • Interview with Geraldo Rivera

• We should have suicide parlors where, if someone wants to die, they should be allowed to die. If someone wants to use drugs they should be allowed to use drugs. How can someone else say "You can't do what you want to do"?
  • Interview with Geraldo Rivera

• I don't deal with women I got to tell what to do. They know what to do.
  • Interview with Geraldo Rivera

• I wanna say this to every man that has a mind, to all the intelligent life forms that exist on this planet Earth. I wish the British would say this to the Scottish Rites and the Masons and all the people with minds who have degrees of knowledge, and who are aware of courts, laws, United Nations, governments.
  In the 40s, we had a war, and all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in the penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the World Court - there must be a One World Court, or we're all gonna be devoured by crime.
  Crime, and the definition of crime comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. Crime is bad. When you go to war and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth petty's pigs.
  Truth is, we've got to overturn this decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Degrees of the war was written in Switzerland, in Geneva, at conferences that were made by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then when the United States and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since. War is not a crime, but if you judge war as a crime in a court room, then turn around: If 2 + 3 = 5, and 3 + 2 = 5; if you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war. I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war.
  I've been a prisoner of war since 1944 in Juvenile Hall, for setting a school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out why I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be; you've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's your economy, your whole economy is based on the war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you've got your silver market sterling off of the war, you've got to take your gold and your diamonds off of the war - You've got to overturn that decision, that hung 6000 men by the neck.
  You killed 6000 soldiers for obeying orders. It's wrong. And the world has got to accept that's wrong. When you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then that will be a note on that court, and we'll have some harmony going on this planet Earth, now.
  • Interview with Bill Murphy (1994) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjh_wOByoY

• I was so smart when I was a kid that I learnt that I was dumb fast.
  • Interview on the album All the Way Alive (2003)

• Look down at me and you see a fool; look up at me and you see a god; look straight at me and you see yourself.
  • As quoted in 101 People You Won't Meet in Heaven: The Twisted Achievements of the Most Brutal and Sadistic Individuals the World Has Ever Known (2007) by Michael Powell, p. 148

About Charles Manson

• I don't believe you're leaving 'cause me and Charles Manson like the same ice cream.
  • Tori Amos, in the lyrics of the song "Tear in Your Hand" from Little Earthquakes (1991)

• Charlie was always preaching love. Charlie had no idea what love was. Charlie was so far from love it wasn't even funny. Death is Charlie's trip. It really is.
  • Testimony of Paul Watkins, as quoted in Helter Skelter : The True Story of the Manson Murders (1974) by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, p. 379

• Let's clap our hands for the president and Jesus Christ and did I mention Charlie Manson and everybody else, who was nice.
  • Daron Malakian in the song of 3005.