Jay-Z Quotes

Stop screamin', you know the demon said it's best to die, And even if Jehovah witness, bet he'll never testify, D'Evils.

I got 99 Problems but Mitt ain't one.

I'm not concerned with noise because I'm playing the long game.

Screamin' 'Carpe Diem!' until I'm a Dead Poet.

By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.

Well I'm not just gon' go and do rap songs. I wanna touch, and maybe help, and see what I can do in these areas.' As I start looking around me, looking at things in ways that I can become helpful, starting at the first thing, water. Something as simple as water.

The day Obama got elected, the gangsta became less relevant.

I'm gonna fight, and I'm gonna make something out of nothing. That's pretty much the American dream. So, for me, the realization that I could speak to people like that came first on a small scale. Then it just started happening. I started having this vibration.

I never ask for nothin' I don't demand of myself. Honesty, loyalty, friends and then wealth

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it's very hard to teach racism to a teenager who's listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It's hard to say, 'That guy is less than you.' The kid is like, 'I like that guy, he's cool. How is he less than me?

Hip-hop gave a generation a common ground that didn't require either race to lose anything; everyone gained.

My thing is related to who I am as a person. The clothes are an extension of me. The music is an extension of me. All my businesses are part of the culture, so I have to stay true to whatever I'm feeling at the time, whatever direction I'm heading in. And hopefully, everyone follows.

Everybody can tell you how to do it but they never done it

Your future is ahead of you. Imagine the notion of the past fifteen years of your life being a blip in your story.

Remind yourself. Nobody built like you, you design yourself.

Without the work, the magic won’t come.

Everything evens up, you just wait, Even a garbage can gets a steak, You ain't even a garbage can, you have faith!

If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts — but it’s not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it’s any better — but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.

Don't tell me what was said about me. Tell me why they were so comfortable to say it to you.

I'm hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That's what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that's from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.

I think Lil Wayne is extremely talented. I think he's one of the most talented ones out there.

Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.

I think the consumption of music is at an all-time high. But I think the ways that record companies are trying to monetize it is just all over the place. At the end of the day, music is in the clouds. Before, you could hold it, look at it, turn it around. Now, it's just in the air.

I'm trying to tell the story in the most clear, concise, and truthful way, taking those everyday words and phrases and capturing them in a way that they become something else.

My life after childhood has two main stories: the story of the hustler and the story of the rapper, and the two overlap as much as they diverge. I was on the streets for more than half of my life from the time I was thirteen years old. People sometimes say that now I'm so far away from that life - now that I've got businesses and Grammys and magazine covers - that I have no right to rap about it. But how distant is the story of your own life ever going to be? The feelings I had during that part of my life were burned into me like a brand. It was life during wartime.

One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank, they don't like to think of themselves as poor.

Used to rock a throwback ballin on the corner, now I rock tailored suit lookin' like a owner.

Don't make decisions based on the fear.

Men lie, women lie, numbers dont

If you want the old me, go buy my old albums.

When people say stuff like, "Oh, that's soft rock. I don't listen to that," I find that elitist. It's music-racist.

I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man!

People who don't know you, you don't know their motives. They smile at you all day, "Oh, that's great. You've done it again! You're the greatest!" And that's not good for an artist.

For me, the challenge is just making great albums, because talent - and writing in general - is not tangible. There's no expiration date on it. At the same time, you might wake up tomorrow and be unable to write music.

That's why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club. People are intermingling, hanging out, having fun, enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It's worldwide. Everywhere you go, people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.

What people do in their own homes is their business, and you can choose to love whoever you love. That's their business. It's no different than discriminating against blacks. It's discrimination, plain and simple.

New York has a thousand universes in it that don't always connect but we do all walk the same streets, hear the same sirens, ride the same subways, see the same headlines in the Post, read the same writings on the walls. That shared landscape gets inside of all of us and, in some small way, unites us, makes us think we know each other even when we don't.

Treat my first like my last and the last like my first and my thirst is the same as- when I came.

Be fluid. Treat each project differently. Be water, man. The best style is no style. Because styles can be figured out. And when you have no style they can't figure you out.

You can't turn a bad girl good, but once a good girls' gone bad, she's gone forever.

People really feel like music is free, but will pay $6 for water. You can drink water free out of the tap and it's good water. But they're okay paying for it. It's just the mindset right now.

Life is for living, not living uptight, see ya somewhere up in the sky.

If the beat is time, flow is what we do with that time, how we live through it. The beat is everywhere, but every life has to find its own flow.

I'm a mirror. If you're cool with me, I'm cool with you, and the exchange starts. What you see is what you reflect. If you don't like what you see, then you've done something. If I'm standoffish, that's because you are.

We change people through conversation, not through censorship.

The reason I've been groundedand able to make albums, is because I've allowed my friends to come with me and voice an opinion. That's who keeps you grounded, the people who have known you longest.

I ain't lookin' at you dudes -I'm lookin' past you.