KRS-One

When I wake up in the morning, do I think I'm a role model? Yes. I'm not trying to have a pristine image, because a real role model shows you to the good and ugly.

Many of us were raised without a father, and the subject of deadbeat dads hits home in a lot of areas. Most of all, doing a song about being a father to your daughter flies straight in the face of the argument that says hip-hop is misogynistic.

It's always baffled me why BET looks the way it does. This is Black Entertainment Television. Why are we up there, then, looking like idiots? It's because black people are marketing black people like that.

When you're not attached to anything, nothing can harm you. When people become attached, they can be harmed. I know this, so I don't attach myself to anything, really.

When you know your self-worth, and you read and you ask questions and you study and you travel, you become free.

Only love is consistent because only love is unconditional.

Hate reveals itself for what it really is - evil! It cannot see clearly, so it exposes itself at every turn, and those that truly love can see it.

You must have an opinion about yourself, some kind of meaning to yourself, a purpose, if you are really going to learn anything or develop into that which you desire to be.

I honestly now know that I'm the physical embodiment of hip-hop on earth. That's my only purpose here on earth is to keep the culture together long enough for it to remain everything that we thought it could be when I was coming up.

Hip hop is a human skill, and the practice of real hip hop should remind us of our humanity.

The truth is nobody was a Muslim until Public Enemy came out. Then, everybody was Muslim this and Muslim that. It's a bandwagon thing. Islam is a way of life... it's a religion. It's not just something you put on a record.

The Temple of HipHop has declared HipHop its own religion. We believe HipHop is divine. HipHop proves the existence of God.