Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

Partnering with Atlantic Records creates the opportunity to take what we’re doing to the next level, without compromising.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It’s the other way around. They never vote for us.

It must be quite mysterious to some people why I bother to carry on. Because, you know, I don’t sell that many records.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

Rock stars are good at making noise.

Pop music will never be low brow.

In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute – a white skin.

I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music ‚made it‘ the same way. It’s all different. There’s no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.

In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

It’s true the punk fashion itself was iconographic: rips and dirt, safety pins, zips, slogans, and hairstyles. These motifs were so iconic in themselves – motifs of rebellion.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

Trouble brews when we steal from the poor and give to the rich.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.

Working with J Balvin has undoubtedly been an unparalleled experience.

What ‚multiculturalism‘ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, ‚If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.‘

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.

Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you’re always going to find a hip-hop tape; that’s all I buy, that’s all I live, that’s all I listen to, that’s all I love.

Looking at 2014, I look back: we made more money off ‚Mailbox Money‘ than we would have made off taking an advance from anybody. We made more money letting our fans buy the stuff directly from us than what any label could have offered us.

I have taken taking my music to labels for years, and everyone just thought it was creepy. They thought the images with the music were weird and verging on psychotic.

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.

Probably the reason it’s a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you’re getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you’re going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there’s a kind of bundle.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

Apple has given me a platform to spread music. They’re giving us Latinos a chance to shine.

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

I’m well past the age where I’m acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You’re not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you’re not going to get played on radio and you’re not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

Smooth functioning of social life has always depended on the recognition of certain basic limits to behavior. We cannot simply say or do anything we wish, or offend people, without paying consequences – isolation, ostracism, etc.

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

All I do is make music.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

When you’re a pop star, it’s a little conservative; you always have to stay in a box. You have fans that are five and fans that are 65; there are so many people wanting so many things.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

I probably could have toured off ‚Trilogy‘ for the rest of my life. It definitely changed the culture. No one can do a trilogy again without thanking The Weeknd.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.