“No matter who you are, black, white, green, there’s going to be things in your way, you know what I mean?”

You can’t please everybody. You’d be crazy if you’re trying to. So take some time out to do some things for yourself.

I just enjoy life now. I just enjoy every morning I get to wake up.

No matter what the song was about, I had ’em out there.

I think the hip-hop purists are purists through and through. They’re here to criticize all of us. That’s just how it is. We as MC’s criticize each other. That’s the nature of hip-hop.

I’m talking about me being American and growing up in a crazy world and helping to reflect all different sides of life.

It speaks to your livelihood and it’s not compromised. It’s blunt. It’s raw, straight off the street – from the beat to the voice to the words.

I don’t go out unless I’m working. My quality time is when I’m doing nothing.

I like the way hip-hop is now. It’s grown up enough so that it can get involved with politics if it feels like it.

My fun is not doing the easy work. My fun is doing what’s me.

I think I’ve had the longest career of strength, focus, and still being able to sell records.

You don’t know anything about respect; you don’t know anything about being faithful and loyal to your girlfriend.

I want to sound like an instrument. I want my voice and my words to marry the beat.

You can hear, like, you know, Africans and Jamaicans doing it just kind of as, like, a rhythmic, poetic conversation, you know, to a rhythm.

All fatherhood is very important because single mothers shouldn’t have to raise sons or daughters; they need that help.

I’m a big fan of Common. I’m a big fan of Scarface; I’m a big fan of so many people, from Jeezy to… well, there are a lot of people’s music that I respect.

I never stood for any president in my life, never voted, before Barack Obama. It changed my life to vote. It starts there with me.

This only grant me, that my means may lie, too low for envy, for contempt to high.

Just because I don’t show six-pack abs doesn’t mean that I don’t have them.

If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.

The process of re-writing and writing and re-writing means that you may have a brilliant phrase, but over time it distills and distorts and changes.

If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women.

At whatever time highly skilled physicians shall have developed the healing of illnesses by means of foods, and shall make provision for simple foods, and shall prohibit humankind from living as slaves to their lustful appetites.

You mean in the state?

Music is only a means to an end – it is not the end. The concern is with the condition of man