Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

I don’t know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It’s also changing how we’re telling stories.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

I want a president with a record of public service, someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase fame and fortune for ourselves: we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can’t become athletes. We’re watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

Our constitution is a ray of hope: H for harmony, O for Opportunity, P for people’s participation and E for equality.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

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.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

I wasn’t very good in academics, but I could have been if I could have studied well. I was a smart kid.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

Wine gives a man nothing… it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

Art is the proper task of life.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

I can’t keep somebody from being a star, and I can’t make somebody a star, and nobody can.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

I get up every morning and say, ‚Father, give me strength today, not strength so I can lift 500 pounds, but give me strength, Lord, so when I speak, my words might motivate, might inspire somebody, Lord, when they see me, let them see you. When they hear me, Lord, let them hear you. In your holy name I pray.‘

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

God puts people in our lives on purpose so we can help them succeed and help them become all He created them to be. Most people will not reach their full potential without somebody else believing in them.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?