Stephen Jackson Quotes

But hey, when you live in Watts, you need a little smack to get by, you know what I mean? You need something soft and comfortable in your life, 'cause you're not going to get it from what's around you. And society isn't going to give it to you.

I've lived places these guys can't defecate in.

Some people see Baltimore as a hopeless place. Some have even made a lot of money on it.

Growing up in New Orleans and just being in a poverty-stricken neighborhood gave me that same fire that Eazy had to separate himself from what could have ended up being such a bad situation.

I wasn't born with a golden spoon in my mouth. It was a really tough life.

We are an impoverished society. It is a poor society indeed that can’t pay for … amenities; that has no money for anything except expressways to rush people out of our dull and deteriorating cities

If you've seen one city slum you've seen them all.

The greatest and best of our race have necessarily been nurtured in the bracing school of poverty—the only school capable of producing the supremely great.

There are thousands of Fosters in Kentucky, who for want of proper education and encouragement, are lost to the world.

People who are underprivileged have more to grieve and have more to overcome.

Some white Milwakeeans still referred to the North side as 'the cire', as they did in the 1960s, and if they ventured into it, they saw street after street of sagging duplexes, fading murals, twenty-four hour daycares, and corner stores with 'WIC Accepted Here' signs.

If a kid is born into a tough situation with no means of dealing with it, you end up with kids who are mentally ill and have no way of reaching out.

As someone who grew up in public housing, I've known these conditions.

P Street in D.C. is one of the worst areas in the city. Some of the things I saw, the things I experienced, the things we came through, really gave me a whole new perspective on life.

I met a number of young, striving, enterprising people in cities like Aligarh and Hubli. But the mental landscape of these towns is out of sync with their reality. Many of these towns are hellholes.

When you grow up on the other side of the tracks, you're used to taking a few bumps.

I grew up poor. The fact that I had to struggle to succeed, that wasn't a big deal to me. I'd struggled my whole life.

Mobb Deep's music, we represent poverty. That's what made us. That's who made us. That's who brought us up.

But I think most importantly, we need to realize that not everyone is privileged or born into a good life, stable homes or a home, period.

When it comes to Baltimore I want to say that it's actually a lot worse than what you see in 'The Wire.'

Every night for dinner we had a big chunk of dirt.

I was in Vancouver, and I was in what I was told was the poorest neighborhood in North America - which I find very hard to believe because has anyone here ever been to Detroit?

Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled!

African-Americans now 45 percent poverty in the inner cities. The education is a disaster. Jobs are essentially nonexistent.