Tupac Shakur Quotes

71 Sourced Quotes

Everybody's at war with different things… I'm at war with my own heart sometimes.

Tupac Shakur
To dance with the naked [blow-up] doll, that was me! That's what I mean by I'm real, I'm truly hardcore, because I needed the money and I had to work. So if he told me that for me to get paid I had to go out there in bikini briefs and hop on top of this [blow-up] doll and that's how I gotta get paid, and I was homeless at the time, that's what I had to do. But What I did was not let him pimp me, you know what I'm saying. It wasn't like I just did that because that was my order. As soon as I got the check's to say what was on my mind, I said what was on my mind. And we have a platinum record now, you know what I'm saying.

Tupac Shakur
It's a constant man-ego-check going on in the streets, in this world.

Tupac Shakur
It's like, you hungry, you reached your level. We asked ten years ago. We was asking with the Panthers. We was asking with them, the Civil Rights Movement. We was asking. Those people that asked are dead and in jail. So now what do you think we're gonna do? Ask?

Tupac Shakur
I want to grow. I want to be better. You Grow. We all grow. We're made to grow.You either evolve or you disappear.

Tupac Shakur
I know how it's gonna be when I die. It's going to be no noise, you ain't going to hear people screaming. I'mma fade out.

Tupac Shakur
I am not a perfectionist, but still I seek perfection. I am not a great romantic, but yet I yearn 4 affection

Tupac Shakur
Watch people, because you can fake for a long time, but one day you're gonna show yourself to be a phony.

Tupac Shakur
It's not my liking for guns, what about the NRA? We all have the rights to bear arms, I have that, I have that same right as you do. Just because I'm black doesn't mean I shouldn't have a gun; I legally own guns.

Tupac Shakur
Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in: We are hungry, please let us in. We are hungry, please let us in. After about a week that song is gonna change to: We hungry, we need some food. After two, three weeks, it's like: Give me the food Or I'm breaking down the door. After a year you're just like: I'm picking the lock. Coming through the door blasting.

Tupac Shakur
Marlon Brando is not a gangster-actor, he's an actor. Axl Rose and them are not gangster rock-and-rollers, they're rock-and-rollers right. So I'm a rapper, this is what I do. I'm an artist.

Tupac Shakur
Niggers was the ones with the rope, hanging off trees; Niggas are the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs.

Tupac Shakur
You have to work from one point to go to another. So I admire work ethic, I think it should be re-inforced through out our neigbourhoods, that everybody should work hard, practice makes perfect, you have to be diligent with what you want, you have to apply your self, you have to motivate your self. You have to do for-self by your self, and then you can do things for other people. But that's what I had to do, I had to do for-self.

Tupac Shakur
I exist in the depths of solitude pondering my true goal Trying 2 find peace of mind and still preserve my soul

Tupac Shakur
The only way I've been practicing my whole life, to live my life is to be responsible for what I do. I don't know how to be responsible for what every black male did, I don't know. And yes, I am gonna say that I'm a thug, that's because I came from the gutter and I'm still here. I'm not saying I'm a thug because I wanna rob you or rape people and things. I'm a business man, I mean, you know I'm a business man because you find me at my places of business.

Tupac Shakur
If you thought about it I'm hardly the villain, I'm hardly the one you should be scared of. It's the guy who can't talk, it's the guy without a job, it's the one with scares in his face, not the one clean cut, you know what I mean you should worry about a lot of other things, but not me.

Tupac Shakur
My mother was pregnant with me while she was in prison. She was her own attorney, never been to law school. She was facing 300 and something odd years. One black woman, pregnant, beat the case. That just goes to show you the strength of a black woman and the strength of the oppressed.

Tupac Shakur
I got shot. I always felt like I'd be shot. Somebody was trying to do me some harm because a lot of people don't like me. But I didn't think it was gonna happen at that particular moment.

Tupac Shakur
I'm not thuggin' for me, I'm thuggin' for my family, I pay all the bills, I feed my whole family, wrong or right, I do and I can't stop.

Tupac Shakur
It's not going to stop until "we" stop it. And it's not just white man that's doing this to Brenda. It's not just white man that's keeping us trapped. It's "black." And we have to find the new African in everybody... But before we can be African, we gotta be black first.

Tupac Shakur
You have to be logical. You know? If I know that in this hotel room they have food every day, and I'm knocking on the door every day to eat, and they open the door, let me see the party, let me see them throwing salami all over, I mean, just throwing food around, but they're telling me there's no food.

Tupac Shakur
I think that I'm really, I was a reactionary, and now I don't do that any more. Same person, but I don't react. Before, I reacted. I didn't like the cameras, I split.

Tupac Shakur
The main thing for us to remember is that, the same crime element that white people are scared of, black people are scared of. The same crime element that white people fear, black people fear. So we defend our self from the same crime element that they are scared of, you know what I'm saying, while they are waiting for legislations to pass and everything, we're next door to the killer, we're next door to him you know. Because we up in the projects where it's 80 niggas in the building. All them killers that they letting out, they're right there in that building. Just because we're black we get along with the killers or something? We get along with rapist's because we're black and from the same hood? What is that? We need protection too.

Tupac Shakur
When I say ' thug' I mean not a criminal, someone who beats you over the head, I mean the underdog. You could have two people- one person has everything he needs to succeed and one person has nothing. If the person who has nothing succeeds, he's a thug. Cuz he overcame all the obstacles.

Tupac Shakur
Remember, this country had a man named J. Edgar Hoover, whose job it was to destroy the credibility of any black man coming up.

Tupac Shakur