Bernhard Goetz Quotes

New York is a place that can grind you down and spit you out. A true New Yorker doesn't get ground down - he gets polished.

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

I went to high school in Indianapolis I learned how to walk around looking tough because everybody had to do that. I go out there occasionally and they're still doing it, walking around looking very tough because something might happen.

Everyone does what they believe they need to do in order to survive in this business, 'survive' being the operative word.

By the time I was in high school, I was big enough to beat the hell out of everybody who said anything to me. And I learned how to blend in. All of that made me a very confident man. A very aggressive man. I developed it to survive.

For me, basketball was always about survival because I was just trying to get out the hood, right? When I got to Chicago, I'm like, 'I'm just trying to survive, and anybody I got to step on or break, so be it.'

I do what I've got to do to survive, to keep my teeth in my head, and my head on my shoulders. I apologize to whoever can't put that together and understand that.

I'm from New York. I will kill to get what I need.

I did what sports were supposed to be like, and I was living in my car. So you know what, fine. I'm gonna talk a bunch of sh*t. I'm gonna pose in a couple of pictures. And I'm gonna break a couple of girl's arms, and I'm not gonna feel the least bit sorry about it because you know what? At least I can feed my dog.

The will to survive is not as important as the will to prevail... the answer to criminal aggression is retaliation.

I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.

I love New York City; I've got a gun.

I grew up in the East Village, in Alphabet City, when it was a very dangerous neighborhood. To survive there, I had to learn to be a little bit invisible.

The fact that New York continues in the face of all of the chaos, of the crime, of the madness, you just think that it would just pop and vanish, just explode.

If one comes to kill you, make haste and kill him first.

At heart, I'm a dude from South Central Los Angeles. We roll the way we roll because we had survival tactics; we had to learn how to adapt. That's just me.

I learned to deal with the police... to be tough... to survive.

New York City is a very tough place. I'm tough, too. When people give me a punch in the nose, I react by getting even tougher.

It's the way of life in Saginaw. If you're not tough, you don't survive.

In New York, ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with the hustle to survive.

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.

Forward, always moving forward, from the time I can remember - a kid. I was short, and the big guys would take advantage; I had to turn myself into a body puncher. By that time I was in reform school, they'd have a boxing match every week; they'd bring guys in from outside to fight me.

I ended up moving downtown with these three dudes that I didn't really know. I came into the house, and I didn't realize how things worked. From, like, 15-18, I was just fighting them. I fought, like, every day, and these were, like, older dudes. It was every man for himself.

You had to be tough to survive in my neighborhood.

Early in my career I had to be a goon to survive. I did everything I had to do and probably some things I shouldn't have.