Charles Manson Testimony

I have nothing against none of you. I can't judge any of you. But I think it is high time that you all started looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in.
I sit and watch you from nowhere, and I have nothing in my mind, no malice against you and no ribbons for you.
But you stand and you play the game of money. As long as you can sell a newspaper, some sensationalism, and you can laugh at someone and joke at someone and look down at someone, you know.
You just sell those newspapers for public opinion, just like you are all hung on public opinion, and none of you have any idea what you are doing.
You are just doing what you are doing for the money, for a little bit of attention from someone.
You should all turn around and face your children and start following them and listening to them.

I don't know who I am.
I am whoever you make me, but what you want is a fiend; you want a sadistic fiend because that is what you are. I do not dislike you. I am you. You are blood. You are my brother. That is why I can't fight you.
If I could I would jerk this microphone out and beat your brains out with it because that is what you deserve, that is what you deserve.

You can kill the ego, you can kill the pride, you can kill the want, the desire of a human being.
You can lock him in a cell and you can knock his teeth out and smash his brain, but you cannot kill the soul.
You never could kill the soul. It's always there, the beginning and the end. You cannot stop it, it's bigger than me. I'm just looking into it and it frightens me sometimes.

You can jump up and scream, "Guilty!" and you can say what a no good guy I am, and what a devil, fiend, eeky-sneaky slimy devil I am. It is your reflection and you're right, because that is what I am. I am whatever you make me.

You expect to break me? Impossible! You broke me years ago. You killed me years ago. I sat in a cell and the guy opened the door and he said, "You want out?"
I looked at him and said, "Do you want out?" You are in jail, all of you, and your whole procedure. The procedure that is on you is worse than the procedure that is on me. I like it in there.

We're all our own prisons, we are each all our own wardens and we do our own time. I can't judge anyone else. What other people do is not really my affair unless they approach me with it.

Prison's in your mind......Can't you see I'm free?



--- Manson, 1970 Testimony