Ghetto Quotes - Page 3

• I remember crying all the time. My major thing growing up was I couldn't fit in. Because I was from everywhere, I didn't have no buddies that I grew up with...Every time I had to go to a new apartment, I had to reinvent myself, myself. People think just because you born in the ghetto you gonna fit in. A little twist in your life and you don't fit in no matter what. If they push you out of the hood and the White people's world, that's criminal...Hell, I felt like my could be destroyed at any moment.

  Tupac Shakur

  Growing Up, Thinking, Rapper

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• I'm enjoying the money, the big house, the cars; what ghetto kid wouldn't?

  O. J. Simpson

  Sports, Children, Kids

  O. J. Simpson, Pete Axthelm (1970). “O. J.: the education of a rich rookie”

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• I didn't say I wouldn't go into ghetto areas. I've been in many of them and to some extent I would say this; if you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  Cities, Political, Politics

  In Detroit Free Press 19 Oct. 1968

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• When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Men, White, Law

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2010). “The Trumpet of Conscience”, p.14, Beacon Press

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• Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn't say I lived in a ghetto, I'd say I lived in the 'hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

  Eminem

  Believe, White, People

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• This is my genre...the happiness, tragedies, and the sorrows of mankind as realized in the teeming black ghetto.

  Jacob Lawrence

  Black, Sorrow, Tragedy

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• In the Ghetto, I'd been trying to write for years.

  Mac Davis

  Writing, Years, Trying

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• I was on Ghetto Idol. We didn't have any of the stuff they have now.

  Kelly Clarkson

  Idols, Stuff

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• Booty is just a ghetto expression, and I'm just a booty star.

  Richard Pryor

  Stars, Expression, Booty

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• I am from the inner city, the ghetto. If I can use my platform to carry on a legacy and talk about something that's real, I have to do that, period.

  Kendrick Lamar

  Real, Cities, Legacy

  Source: www.ebony.com

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• Like most ghetto kids I knew it was important to be 'somebody' so I became a good soccer player, because excelling at a sport seemed to make you special.

  Vidal Sassoon

  Soccer, Sports, Kids

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• It's very easy for one talking about violence and hatred for the white man to appeal to [Negro from ghetto]. I have never thought of this, but I think this is quite true, that if, even if you talk to them about nonviolence from a tactical point of view, they can't quite see it because they don't even know they're outnumbered.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Men, Thinking, Views

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• It's amazing to know that 5 years ago I was writing songs in a basement in the ghetto and now I'm writing for Michael Jackson. I'd be a fool not to say it's a dream come true.

  R. Kelly

  Dream, Song, Writing

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• I love William Shakespeare. He wrote some of the rawest stories. I mean look at Romeo and Juliet. That's some serious ghetto expletive. You got this guy Romeo from the Bloods who falls for Juliet, a female from the Crips, and everybody in both gangs are against them. So they have to sneak out and they end up dead for nothing. Real tragic stuff.

  Tupac Shakur

  Real, Fall, Mean

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• Escape from the architecture ghetto is one of the major drivers and has been from the very beginning.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Architecture, Drivers, Has Beens

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• It's important for me to go back into the ghetto, where I'm from. I still get my oxygen from there. I don't live in the ghetto but every time I go back, I'm seeing the same things that I lived. That's one of the things I mean when I say, "My feet back onto the ground."

  Jimmy Cliff

  Mean, Oxygen, Feet

  Source: www.gq.com

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• At the bottom of the social heap is the black man in the big-city ghetto. He lives night and day with the rats and the cockroaches and drowns himself with alcohol and anesthetizes himself with dope, to try and forget where and what he is. That Negro has given up all hope. He's the hardest one for us to reach, because he's the deepest in the mud. But when you get him, you've got the best kind of Muslim. I look upon myself as a prime example of this category - as graphic an example as you could find of the salvation of the black man.

  Malcolm X

  Night, Dope, Men

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• My family didn't have any money growing up. I'm just a girl from the ghetto; from Indio, California.

  Vanessa Marcil

  Girl, Growing Up, California

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• I did not like that name "world music" in the beginning. I think that African music must get more respect than to be put in a ghetto like that. We have something to give to others. When you look to how African music is built, when you understand this kind of music, you can understand that a lot of all this modern music that you are hearing in the world has similarities to African music. It's like the origin of a lot of kinds of music.

  Baaba Maal

  Thinking, Names, Giving

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• This whole urban rap thing needs to be pulled back some. The ghetto is being glorified, and there's nothing good about the ghetto except getting out of one.

  Franklyn Ajaye

  Rap, Needs, Urban

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• I have always disliked the idea of an arts ghetto in which poetry is kept on a life-support system.

  Tony Harrison

  Art, Support Systems, Ideas

  1989 In the Observer, 23 Jul.

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• A ghetto can be improved in one way only: out of existence.

  James A. Baldwin

  Cities, Way, Existence

  "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" by James A. Baldwin, www.esquire.com. October 16, 2007.

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• Literature doesn't have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens characters are Nigerians.

  Ben Okri

  Country, Character, Appetite For Life

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• The United States is in many ways the biggest ghetto in the world.

  Selma James

  United States, World, Way

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• There's so little money in my bank account, my scenic checks show a ghetto.

  Phyllis Diller

  Inspirational, Littles, Bank Accounts

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