Inspiring Greatness: A Collection of Jay-Z's Most Powerful Quotes

"Truth is you don’t need some external demon to take control of you to turn you into a raging, money-obsessed sociopath, you only need to let loose the demons you already have inside of you."

- Jay-Z

"Life is about balance, you have to have time for work, and time for play. If you don’t allow these two things to co-exist you have an imbalance."

- Jay-Z

"Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow."

- Jay-Z

"May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows."

- Jay-Z

"Do me a favor. Don’t do me no favors. I handle mine."

- Jay-Z

"I come from a place where you had to keep your word, where people would stick with you no matter what… I just tried to be a man of my word."

- Jay-Z

"You can pay for school but you can’t buy class."

- Jay-Z

"I believe everyone in the world is born with genius-level talent. Apply yourself to whatever you’re genius at, and you can do anything in the world."

- Jay-Z

"They talk. We live. Who cares what they say?"

- Jay-Z

"Money and power don't change you, they just further expose your true self."

- Jay-Z

"All I got is dreams. Nobody else believes. Nobody else can see. Nobody else but me."

- Jay-Z

"Life is all there is. And if that's true, then we have to really live it -- we have to take it for everything it has and 'die enormous' instead of 'living dormant.'"

- Jay-Z

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

- Jay-Z

"I believe you can speak things into existence."

- Jay-Z

"A wise man told me don't argue with fools. Cause people from a distance can't tell who is who."

- Jay-Z

"We change people through conversation, not through censorship."

- Jay-Z

"They say you can’t turn a bad girl good but once a good girl’s gone bad, she’s gone forever."

- Jay-Z

"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."

- Jay-Z

"Shakespeare was a man who wrote poetry. I'm a man who writes poetry. Why not compare yourself to the best?"

- Jay-Z

"If ya’ll can’t already see, I ain’t worried about ya’ll, ‘cause I’m already me."

- Jay-Z

"I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned, so it evens up for me."

- Jay-Z

"I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of not trying."

- Jay-Z

"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?"

- Jay-Z

"You can want success all you want, but to get it, you can’t falter. You can’t slip, you can’t sleep. One eye open, for real, and forever."

- Jay-Z

"People look at you strange, say you changed. Like you worked that hard to stay the same."

- Jay-Z

"As kids we didn’t complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could. And as soon as we had a little money, we were eager to show it."

- Jay-Z

"Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week."

- Jay-Z

"This is why we shouldn't be afraid. There are two possibilities: One is that there's more to life than the physical life, that our souls "will find an even higher place to dwell" when this life is over. If that's true, there's no reason to fear failure or death. The other possibility is that this life is all there is. And if that's true, then we have to really live it - we have to take it for everything it has and "die enormous" instead of "living dormant," as I said way back on "Can I Live." Either way, fear is a waste of time."

- Jay-Z

"The genius thing that we did was, we didn’t give up."

- Jay-Z

"Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all."

- Jay-Z

"You can want success all you want, but to get it, you can’t falter. You can’t slip. You can’t sleep. One eye open, for real, and forever."

- Jay-Z

"I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!"

- Jay-Z

"I'm not afraid of dying I'm afraid of not trying"

- Jay-Z

"I’d rather die enormous than live dormant."

- Jay-Z

"May the best of your today's be the worst of your tomorrow's"

- Jay-Z

"I believe excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over."

- Jay-Z

"You learn more in failure than you ever do in success."

- Jay-Z

"I’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter."

- Jay-Z

"I’m a hustler, baby; I sell water to a well!"

- Jay-Z

"I look in the mirror, my only opponent."

- Jay-Z

"I went through hell, I’m expecting heaven."

- Jay-Z

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

- Jay-Z

"I think relationships are broken up because of the media."

- Jay-Z

"I was never a worker. And that's not even being arrogant. I was just never a worker."

- Jay-Z

"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."

- Jay-Z

"I try to make music with emotion and integrity. And authenticity. You can feel when something's authentic, and you can feel when it's not: you know when someone's trying to make the club record, or trying to make the girl record, or trying to make the thug record. It's none of that. It's just my emotions."

- Jay-Z

"We were kids without fathers, so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves."

- Jay-Z

"I don't think any rapper can go back. You can be a car salesman, a bank teller - I mean, really good jobs, and people are still gonna look at you and be like, 'You used to rap; what happened?'"

- Jay-Z

"I seen the worst of the worst. I deserve every blessing I receive I’m from the dirt."

- Jay-Z

"Everyone needs a chance to evolve."

- Jay-Z

"Hip-hop is a perfect mix between poetry and boxing."

- Jay-Z

"The truth is you don't need some external demon to take control of you to turn you into a raging, money-obsessed sociopath, you only need to let loose the demons you already have inside of you."

- Jay-Z

"I got 99 Problems but Mitt ain’t one."

- Jay-Z

"You could name practically any problem in the hood and there'd be a rap song for you."

- Jay-Z

"You know the type: loud as a motorbike but wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight."

- Jay-Z

"Driving Benzes with no benefits, not bad huh, for some immigrants."

- Jay-Z

"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."

- Jay-Z

"Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out."

- Jay-Z

"Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama's running so we all can fly."

"Excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over again. You can hit a half-court shot once. That's just the luck of the draw. If you consistently do it... that's excellence."

"Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who've never done anything because if you haven't been successful, then you don't know how it feels to lose it all. You don't have that fear. So why do you think people get stuck in those boxes? It's that fear of going back down."

"I love what I do, and when you love what you do, you want to be the best at it."

"As kids we didn't complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could. And as soon as we had a little money, we were eager to show it."

"I'm far from being god, but I work god damn hard."

"Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that's the foundation for everything great."

"I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can."

"They say a midget standing on a giant's shoulders can see much further than the giant. So I got the whole rap world on my shoulders, they trying to see further than I am."

"I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company."

"I treat people based on who they really are, not the name. Everyone has to be respectful and be a human being. No one's above... That's how I carry it with anybody."