Big Narstie Quotes

I think my thing is I grew up in the ghetto, and I was able to get a second chance. That's what I'm trying to tell kids.

Too many people feel that where you start out dictates where you should end up. I was on welfare and just shy of 19 when my first daughter was born, but I was encouraged to take advantage of my ability and drive and remained in school.

I'm living proof that you can make it out of the ghetto.

I try to use my experience and the fact that I grew up in the ghetto - I tell people you don't have to rob or steal to get out of the ghetto.

That's one thing you Americans take for granted, you know? That you can grow up, you know, not so good circumstances, and you can move. Just because you are born in rural Arkansas, whatever, that doesn't define who you are.

My mother grew up in abject poverty in Mississippi, an elementary school dropout. Yet, with the support of women around her, she returned to school and graduated as class valedictorian - the only one of her seven siblings to finish high school. She became a librarian and then a United Methodist minister.

I broke the cycle of poverty thanks to education.

The mantra I grew up with was that no matter where you came from, hard work and education could set you free.

Because of where I come from, I never thought I'd see in my life a black candidate running for President.

I've always felt that because I'm from Cleveland, which isn't recognised as a place for hip-hop, I needed to step it up if I wanted to make myself known.

The main reason I wanted to be successful was to get out of the ghetto. My parents helped direct my path.

What I will not do is continue to perpetuate stereotypes. I'm the daughter of a maid; why do I have to also play a maid? My mom was a maid so I didn't have to be a maid.

My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.

I'm just trying to touch the world and touch the people and just get good material. And show them that we can get it done. Just because you're African American, you still can touch the masses. And that's my goal. I won't stop until that goal is continued to push it hard to the world that we are the universal person as well.

I had to fight my whole life to break out of my circumstances. That's just part of my makeup.

I am true to my own race. I wish to see all done that can be done for their encouragement, to assist them in acquiring property, in becoming intelligent, enlightened, useful, valuable citizens.

I come from a place, with all due respect, who's never had a music star in hip-hop. So the odds is already against me.

I was only 11 when we filmed the pilot. The idea of a rapper being a star on a sitcom just wasn't heard of.

I grew up in a family in which no male upstream from me had ever finished high school, much less gone to college. But I was taught that even though there was nothing I could do about what was behind me, I could change everything about what was in front of me. My working poor parents told me that I could do better.

I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time.

If I didn't mould my reality then I'd still be in the ghetto where people like me are supposed to stay. You have to dream your way out of the nightmare.

I would stand at the cradle of every colored boy and girl in the land and bid them to awake from their slumber, put on their clothes and shoes, prepare their toilet, eat an early breakfast, throw their satchel of books on their shoulders and hasten to the school house and remain until they have secured a parchment of graduation

I am not a product of privilege, I am a product of opportunity

I did more for the Russian serf in giving him land as well as personal liberty, than America did for the Negro slave set free by the proclamation of President Lincoln. How could you Americans have been so blind as to leave the Negro slave without the tools to work out his own salvation ….Without property of any kind he cannot education himself or his children.