Mr. Lif Quotes

Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the straight-up peak of hip-hop. Straight-up one of the most powerful records ever made, period, in music.

We're kept so busy focusing on things that are extremely mundane while the people that possess the real power are deciding what our reality's going to be.

We're kept scrambling so much that we don't have time to really study and analyze and understand the way that power really works in this country.

The fact is, if you have a solid healthcare plan, you still don't have dental. If you have dental, you might not have vision. And if your back hurts, well, a chiropractor's not covered in that. It's a hassle. You have to go seek out on your own and look for the best plan you can afford, and a lot of times what people can afford is not what they need, and it creates lot of leeway for people to slip through the cracks.

If you look at it on just a very cold scale, corporations and the government do not care about the poor. So in what's considered a poor area, you got to look at things. What's going on there? The actual environment is sick, and sickly, and causes illness.

That's one of the most bold smacks in the face in this country. It's a way to say, "Look, we just don't even care about you," the price of healthcare in this country.

Clearly, I have things to say. I definitely have my opinion, and I definitely have a voracious appetite for analyzing social and political situations, but I don't necessarily want people to expect me to be the next PE or Dead Pres.

If you're following your heart, you're moving in the right direction.

People think that the government honors and respects us, and that they're actually going to come in and help people in need, but in reality it's really just a bunch of red tape, and through the power of language they can really make it seem like they're going to do a lot when they aren't going to do anything but filter money back into their own pockets.

I'm just wondering if this is the most effective method to bring about change. So I'm more inclined to withhold some of my opinions, and not even be involved in any demonstrations of any sort and just really try to figure out a method that I feel is more potent.

You see a briefcase for business, a bookbag for education, a knife and gun for violence. Then there's government, law, media overall, and so on and so forth, just things that we are kept busy by. We're either entertained by them or we're just trying to keep our heads above water by trying to earn enough money at a job so we can afford just any standard of living, let alone the standard that we desire.

I'm not saying I'm going to be deviating from what I've been establishing as far as being aware, but I feel odd about consistently being... I mean, I don't know if I'm... I'm just leery about a lot of things.

The overall "look, this is the one way to live" approach to this individual who is clearly living a happy life, who is clearly completely satisfied with and fulfilled by the tasks that he was able to complete every day, like eating, healing his own wounds, doctoring himself and whatever. And then this voice says, "Look, your life is inadequate. This is the way you need to live." Giving that depiction of the subversive methods by which our way of life creeps into our own psyche and eliminates alternatives. That's what happens.

Politicians step up and say, "This is what were going to do: we're going to set aside 450 million dollars for a mentorship program for orphaned youth," and so on and so forth, and it sounds great in this romanticized vision of what these alleged leaders are going to do for the alleged meek. But it doesn't examine: why are these kids orphans?

Having my foundation be from two positive black role models in my life, my mom and my dad, two strong-minded intelligent individuals who clearly have made a great deal of great decisions in their lives and put me in a position, via educational institutions, to be around other intelligent people and to have a strong moral foundation, from which I try to never stray far. It all spurred me to carve out my own little niche as a human being.

We literally have some of us in the modern culture trying their best to stomp out every other way of life, really. People in tribes are depicted as completely primitive and crazy. The way that we live is very pigheaded and very unaccepting of other ways of life, especially in America.

Business is cold and harsh. Business doesn't consider your personal needs or the ends of your family. Business doesn't allow you to keep to your job after you slaved at a place for 20+ years. Rather than increase your benefits, business cuts you out of the job situation so that you're job-hunting, off to find a far less prestigious position.

As far as sometimes being involved with different demonstrations, I did an anti-war protest in San Fran in January, and I'm standing there, amongst all these people, and it's this great thing to see people being active and actually standing up for what they believe in and still letting the government know that there are people who will still sacrifice a portion of their day to stand up for what they care about, but I'm just thinking to myself, "God, man, these protests have been going on throughout I-don't-even-know-how-many years, and here we are again."