“Just stay busy, stay working. Puff told me, like, the key to this joint—the key to staying on top of things—is treat everything like it's your first project, nomsayin'? Like, it's your first day, like, back when you was an intern. Like, that's how you try to treat things like, just stay hungry."
— The Notorious B.I.G. on the intro to “My 1st Song” by Jay-Z

 “A man who examines the saddle and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his clothes, or according to his social position, which after all is only something that we wear like clothing.” – Seneca

 “Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” – Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)

"Be entrepreneurial about your education." – Ta-Nehisi Coates

"Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get." – Frederick Douglass

“The problem is that we’re asking the wrong question. The issue is not which horse in the race is the most likely winner, but which horse or horses are offering odds that exceed their actual chances of victory. This may sound elementary, and many players may think they are following this principle, but few actually do. Under this mindset, everything but the odds fades from view. There is no such thing as ‘liking’ a horse to win a race, only an attractive discrepancy between his chances and his price.” – Steven Crist

“What I’m saying to you this morning, my friends, even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.’” – Martin Luther King Jr.