Street Wisdom Quotes

Don't believe everything you hear on the street.

One thing I noticed working in the Bronx is that leaders come in the craziest places. They don't always show up at community board meetings. Sometimes it's just the guys on the corner that the boys on the block respect.

People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.

Wisdom cries aloud in the street; she utters her voice in the squares.

Mumbai is the kind of place where you learn how to be street smart... unless you're way too overprotected.

What you learned on the streets of Brooklyn will be a damn sight more helpful to your president than anything you learned at Harvard.

You simply can't get inside the heads of other people and say to them, 'Look, I went through some rough times.' It's impossible to explain everything the streets taught me, and that was quite a lot.

The opinion of the people is not to be taken from the streets.

Everybody that I meet inspires me. You can learn so much from any person that you meet any day on the side of the street.

One thing I have seen over and over again in life is that there is virtually no correlation between intelligence and common sense. IQ doesn't seem to translate that way.

Be sure then to read no mean books. Shun the spawn of the press on the gossip of the hour. Do not read what you shall learn, without asking, in the street and the train.

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

I really believe that you grow up a certain way in New York. There's a New York morality, a sense of loyalty. You know how to win and lose. There's a thousand kids outside, you know who to push and who not to push. There's a sixth sense you develop just because it's New York.

I'm sharp... What the street taught me how to do is how to hustle. How to make something out of nothing.

As soon as I reach any town, I talk to the shoe-shine boys or the barbers or the people in the restaurants, because it's Mr. Joe Doakes who is very close to reality.

I'm an Einstein of the streets and an Oxford scholar of common sense.

When you meet a stranger, look at his shoes. Keep your money in your shoes.

When I go back to my hood, Queens, Brooklyn, or here in L.A., the people that's not famous, that's what inspires me.

A vendor selling coconuts on the road is a philosopher. He will have ideas on politics, economics, history, sports. This has saved India. The fact that the common Indian is a thinker is vital.

Gotta keep your ear to the streets. That's Rule No. 1.

Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.

In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.

The streets helps you a lot in music, cause it let's you know that you can't trust nobody and that nobody's gonna wait for you. You can't just sit there with dope in your pocket and think that people are gonna come to you. You gotta put the product out there.