Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help – we can all help.

Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

I can express myself.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

I don’t have to be what you want me to be.

It’s a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn’t support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, ‚Well, yeah,‘ but you start to think, ‚Why not, though?‘ What makes one more valuable than another?

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.

Woman was God’s second mistake.

God has equipped you to handle difficult things. In fact, He has already planted the seeds of discipline and self-control inside you. You just have to water those seeds with His Word to make them grow!

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

I’d rather be a victor than a victim.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he’s an American child.

I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

A friend doesn’t go on a diet because you are fat.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

One man with courage is a majority.

The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.

God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.

I don’t believe we are supposed to go through life defeated and not having enough money to pay our bills or send our kids to college.

To start with, I love New York… It’s a little bit of the whole world… In New York, the whole world comes to you.

Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.

If it’s stress of things that we cannot control, what you have to do is you mitigate that stress as much as possible. You’ve planned, you’ve trained, you’ve done everything you can in your power to mitigate the stress that’s facing you. And then after that, there’s nothing you can do. So, you have to let that one go.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.