Jay-Z Quotes

People feel politics isn't about their lives.

I'm a big fan of Barack Obama. I think he carries a heavier burden and is held to a greater and higher standard than other candidates : I think there's a large, large portion of this country that feels disenfranchised and marginalized by the political process.

As I said, I spent most of my adult life thinking I didn't have a vote, and therefore that what I thought didn't matter.

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America.

People don't want to believe they have to speak like Obama or Clinton to participate meaningfully in politics, because most of us don't speak like Obama or Clinton.

I was born and brought up in south east London and been very conscious for a long time that people feel politics happens to them and not with them.

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

It has been the purpose of the ruling class, apparently, to build new barriers between themselves and the common people, rather than tear away any of those already existing. I think no one can understand the actual condition of the mass of whites in Georgia and the Carolinas, except by some daily contact with them. The injustice done to three fourths of them was hardly less than that done to all the blacks.... Nine of every ten white men in South Carolina had almost as little to do with even State affairs as the negroes had.

These institutions are generally more skilled at getting rich off those living in the lower economic reaches than they are in preparing them for the job market.

The ‘poor white’ is actually degraded; the mountain white is a person not yet graded up.

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood, so there was always a sense of struggle, but we had hope.

Poverty is not just about income: it's about aspiration. It's not just about giving people a couple of extra pounds a week, welcome though that is.

When you think of the exponential speed and scale of expansion of social media or a service, you have to believe that it is equally possible to rapidly transform the lives of those who have long stood on the margins of hope.

Silicon Valley is the engine for wealth creation. They've displaced energy, they've displaced financial services, and if we don't start including a broader array of people in that, the same group of people is going to rise to the top.

I saw what the Depression was doing to my students. Often they could get no jobs, or jobs which were wholly inadequate. And through them, I began to understand how deeply political and economic events could affect men's lives. I began to feel the need to participate more fully in the life of the community.

I assure, the door to politics is never closed. Whatever medium is necessary to reach the masses, I will take that - be it cinema or politics.

I had my freedom, and I had my comfortable life, but I couldn't accept the fact that the politicians were making it increasingly difficult for my kids and millions of others to achieve their dreams as I had achieved mine. So, in 2012, I ran for president.

Is it a coincidence that in 1998, Barack Obama talks about a majority coalition of welfare recipients and in 2012 we got a record number of Americans on food stamps while he's president? I don't think it's a coincidence.

I didn't grow up with a lot of money, but I grew up with a lot of opportunities that many people don't have.

The poor don't want some small life. They don't want to game the system. They want to contribute, and they want to thrive. But poverty reduces people born for better things.

A winner-takes-all economy that offers only limited access to the middle class is a recipe for democratic malaise and dereliction.

The destiny of the Latino community is interwoven with the destiny of the United States.

I don't think people go to musicians for their political points of view. I think your political point of view is circumstances and then how you were nurtured and brought up.

Nobody talks about the poor. Everybody talks about the middle class and just kinda want to ignore that the poor exist. And you cannot ignore that they exist if you want to help them.

Being exposed to the enlisted Army was an eye-opener. I thought everyone was like me, but the enlisted Army is a constituency of the dispossessed.