“Why can’t [the President] take some of those people off the street and put them in his White House? Then he’ll have people from the street to help him with his ideas. They haven’t been homeless forever; they’ve done things for society.”

“Hip Hop when it started it was supposed to be this new thing that had no boundaries and was so different to everyday music. Now it seems like I was starting to get caught up in the mode of what made hip hop come about. As long as the music has the true to the heart soul it can be hip hop. As long it has soul to it, hip hop can live on.”

“What makes me saying ‘I don’t give a f***,’ different from Patrick Henry saying ‘Give me liberty or give me death?’ What makes my freedom any different than Bosnians or who ever [America] wants to fight for this year? They should give money to the ghetto.”

“I said, I’m gonna write a song about the women like my mom, women like my sister, who I think represent the strong black women, and I did that. Now I’mma write about the women I see everyday and that was ‘[I] Get Around.’ If I just write songs like ‘Keep Ya Head Up’ it would make me seem more than what I am, but I’m just a normal man.”

“Every day, I’m standing outside trying to sing my way in: We are hungry, please let us in We are hungry, please let us in. After about a week that song is gonna change to: We hungry, we needsome food. After two, three weeks, it’s like: Give me the food Or I’m breaking down the door. After a year you’re just like: I’m picking the lock. Coming through the door blasting.”

“Can’t close my eyes cause all I see is terror. I hate the man in the mirror cause his reflection makes the pain turn realer.”

“If we really are saying that rap is an art form, then we got to be more responsible for our lyrics. If you see everybody dying because of what you are saying, it don’t matter that you didn’t make them die. It just matters that you didn’t save them.”

“I don’t want to be a role model. I just want to be someone who says, this is who I am, this is what I do, I say what’s on my mind.”

“If God wanted me to be quiet he would’ve never showed me what he does.”

“My mama always used to tell me: ‘if you can’t find somethin’ to live for, you best find somethin’ to die for.’”

“I feel like role models today are not meant to be put on a pedestal. But more like angels with broken wings.”

“Let the Lord judge the criminals.”

“I would rather have been shot straight-up in cold blood-but to be set up? By people who you trusted? That’s bad.”

“We wouldn’t ask why a rose that grew from the concrete for having damaged petals; in turn, we would all celebrate its tenacity, we would all love its will to reach the sun. Well, we are the roses, this is the concrete and these are my damaged petals. Don’t ask me why, thank God, and ask me how.”

“Somebody help me, tell me where to go from here cause even thugs cry, but do the Lord care?”

“All I’m trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.”

“I know it seems hard sometimes but remember one thing. Through every dark night, theres a bright day after that. So no matter how hard it get, stick your chest out, keep ya head up and handle it.”

“For every dark night, there’s a brighter day.”

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me light glinting on broken glass.

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this large collection of Voltaire quotes! It’s amazing how his thoughts and ideas have remained fresh and relevant from the French Enlightenment to today.

“We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we do the best we know.”

“If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.”

“I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher.”