Curtis Mayfield Quotes

Grub first, then ethics.

I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both. But you have to learn how to get along. I did an awful lot of fighting. I was tough, but I'm also relatively small, so I learned very early on to use my mind.

I don't think that there's any shame at all in doing what you have to do in order to survive, to make money while you continue to pursue your dreams.

If you look at the movie 'Belly,' I identify with Sincere the most. I am a gangster. I love my lady to death. I'm not in the game for the wrong reasons. I'm not in the game for the glory. I'm in the game to survive so the people that I love could be straight. I'm a highly intelligent individual.

Everyone is just making the choices they think will help them get by.

In brief, egoism in its modern interpretation, is the antithesis, not of altruism, but of idealism.

Cats know, comin' out of four, they better be standin' on it, else they'll be standin' in it.

You win any which way you can. You do what you have to do to get by. That's the way it works in any job.

Don't dress to kill, dress to survive.

No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.

I'm for whatever gets you through the night.

It is best to live however one can be.

What is right and what is practicable are two different things.

You have to have the common sense.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.

I would rather be an opportunist and float than go to the bottom with my principles around my neck.

You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

An ideologue believes that what is right will work. A pragmatist believes that what works is right.

My philosophy is that you do what you have to do.

It's a survival thing. I don't do anything to be artistic or just because I like it.

I'm not Mr. Goody-Good or anything, but I'm not stupid.

For me, it was always survival. Learn where not to be at so you don't get shot. Learn where not to walk at so you don't get jumped. Learn who to stand up to, who not to stand up to. And then, when I got old enough to get a chip on my shoulder, I wanted to be the dog. I wanted to be the alpha.

Most of the places I came from, you gotta do a lot of gunslinging or coaching by the seat of your pants.

I'm really pragmatic. That's my reality.