Quotes from KRS-One

Young people may be stupid at times, but they respond to the truth when it is present, and for them, KRS-One is the truth!

If you vote for evil, you are evil yourself.

You have to be educated to vote.

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

Why isn't there any 50-year-old MCs killing it? I'm 46. Am I the only one? I can't wait to get to 50. I'm going to let everybody know it! I'm going to wear a shirt that says 'I'm 50.'

Every ghetto kid that walks the earth can see something in KRS-One that reminds him of himself.

If the radio ever played my music, I would sue them. And they know it, which is why they don't play my music.

DMX - everything this brother spits is hot. Everything. This is the heat right here. When I stand next to MCs, this is who I wanna stand next to.

I am the manifestation of study, NOT the manifestation of money. Therefore, I advance through thought, NOT what's manufactured and bought.

When you seek to do something, if you don't know the whole game plan, you're usually going to work against yourself.

I am a poet, and I speak poetically.

I make intelligence cool. I make spirituality cool. If we can make one's devotion to God cool, then I think I did a great thing. I can rest in peace.

I grew up in them streets, like everyone else but instead of pushin' drugs, I pushed knowledge of self

Ignorance is a poison and knowledge will nourish.

Hip is the knowledge and Hop is the movement.

Every generation brings its own presentation of what hip-hop is to them.

I have to put a business model together because certain businesses are approaching me as a legend, as if I'm on my way out. Same goes for the way I get presented on the VH1 Hip Hop Honors and BET. I get lifetime achievement awards because of who I am and what I've done, but they want to put me in a place, as if I'm on my way out.

The single most important lesson I learned is that black people are the cause of black people's demise.

I don't even want my music on mainstream radio. They don't deserve it. They destroy careers.

There's no distinction. A teacher is a preacher. The teachers in public schools are preachers, and the preachers in church are teachers.

If we have power to degrade an entire society, then we also have the power to uplift it.

Radio has always been just disgusting.

Original hip hop manipulated technologies of all sorts; it was not manipulated by the technology itself.

Record companies feel they are the culture. Hip-hop has to begin to define, protect, and promote itself, and that's why we founded the Temple.