I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

I use my celebrity status to inspire someone, to give them hope.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

I want to be like Bruce Springsteen or something, making songs that are relevant.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

I’m just a kid that defied the odds. I’m just a kid that ignored the doubt. I’m just a kid from a little place in Dublin, Ireland, that went all the way, and I’m going to continue to go all the way.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Snoop ain’t never cosigned me, but I know everybody is like, ‚That’s the next Snoop.‘ Nah, I’m Nipsey, and I got to work to define myself.

I have the Midas touch, in the way that when I hook up with a project, I feel, not speaking cocky or conceited, but there’s a confidence I have. I learned that from Muhammad Ali; I used to bodyguard him. He taught me about confidence. So when it comes to any job I work, I’m gonna do it good; I’m going to bring it over the top.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

I hope that people around the world will be as inspired as I am to step up and to speak out on behalf of girls around the world who struggle to go to school.

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

When you’re around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it’s not strange, it’s just Gaga.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one’s self.

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They’re just braver five minutes longer.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.