Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

Racism is real in this country.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

Everybody’s got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

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

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

I have this really high priority on happiness and finding something to be happy about.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

I’m not somebody that just wants to hold up a white flag and say, ‚Let’s all just get along.‘ I think people that do horrible things should be held accountable.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

To try to become happy is to try to build a machine with no other specifications than it shall run noiselessly.

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can’t do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can’t get, because… you know… I don’t have the tattoos; I have a different image.

To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate… we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.

Smiles are the language of love.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

I made all my generals out of mud.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

I want to be an artist, not… a celluloid aphrodisiac.