Top 30 Cheech Marin Quotes

Our first gig was a battle of the bands. We did 45 minutes of comedy and never played a note – and we won!

At the end of the day, it not only doesn’t make logical sense to deny licenses to undocumented immigrants, it doesn’t make financial sense.

Of all the plays in baseball, stealing home is by far the most exciting.

What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional, intellectual experience, that’s a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.

Every kid that goes to Catholic school believes he’s going to be a priest one day.

I was part of the draft resistance movement in LA where we did demonstrations at the draft centre and burned our cards and made a lot of trouble on campus.

Don’t ever insult a Chicano about being a Chicano because then all the other Chicanos will be on you with a vengeance. They will even fight each to be first in line to support you.

To do a comedy team, it requires so much extracurricular stuff, so much compromise, so much intuitiveness to know what the other guy is doing. That’s why it’s so hard to do it.

My marriage was breaking up, and my marriage with Chong was breaking up. I had to come back and kind of start on my own again.

I was an altar boy and a choir member.

It is surprising how many professional athletes, along with their families and friends, are gaga over movie and music stars, and the reverse is true with entertainers and sports stars.

My interest in art must have started with my Catholic upbringing. Art was everywhere: churches with its paintings, sculptures, stained glass, textiles, and fine metalwork.

If there is one phrase or action that every person on the planet would like to erase from his or her memory or have the chance to undo, it would be, ‘Let’s do it again.’

Mexicans are quasi-legal.

I drive an S80 Volvo; it’s one of those real flashy cars. No, I just like it because I like a nice, cush ride; the Volvo is really cush, and it’s powerful and fast.

I was interested in a lot of subjects from very early on. And that’s uniquely Chicano because every Chicano I knew always had three jobs.

So what’s really behind the ‘English Only’ Movement? Fear. Fear of being taken over and one day they will have to learn something different. Heaven forbid they would have to learn something new.

I guess what really made me a Dodgers fan from the beginning was that the team had Jackie Robinson, the first ‘Negro’ in the major leagues.

It always trips me out that America, the most powerful and magnificent nation in the history of the world, whose might was built by immigrants from all over the world, only speaks one language.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, my wife speaks five languages: Russian, English, French, Italian and, out of self-defense, Spanish. I watched her learn Spanish in three months.

I guess one of the ways that karma works is that it finds out what you are most afraid of and then makes that happen eventually.

I’ve never seen a NASCAR race; I’ve seen an Indianapolis 500 race.

Chicanos and running water are endlessly fascinating. I can watch them all day.

As much as I loved Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Junior Gilliam, and Don Newcombe, I loved watching Willie Mays play more than all of them combined, even if he played for the ‘bad guys!’

Loyalty and communication are always rewarded in sports.

Being a Chicano in Hollywood, my experience is that you’re not given credit for any sophistication… You’re just kind of some guy that just crossed the border, you know, on the back of a truck and that’s it.

By the time I discovered Chicano painters in the mid-’80s, I recognized that these guys were really world-class painters, but they weren’t getting any attention, which was good in one sense in that I could get their work for cheaper!

Just about every Latin American country has sent players to the big leagues, from the Dominican Republic to Costa Rica.

I lived in an all-black neighborhood, followed by an all-white one, and other kids in the always called me Mexican in both neighborhoods.

Hey, I was raised in the church.