Ice Cube Quotes

Most of the problems that we have are brought on by the government and not by music. Music is a mirror of what we're going through, not the cause of what we're going through.

I've always gotten good grades, you know, with my teachers and my English teachers, 'cause I was able to - they'd [say], "What did you do for the summer?" I'm able to explain it to them in a written form. And my teachers always patted me on the back for that, being able to take what's in my mind and put it on paper.

I've been caught in parachute pants. And on my high school yearbook, they used the wrong picture. They were supposed to use the picture of me with a nice suit on. They used me with my collar flipped up, in a fuchsia and white striped shirt. I blame Prince and Michael Jackson in the Eighties for that.

For my birthday, buy me a politician!

You want the industry to finally admit that you're good. But I'm still good without their admission.

Well, for the transition from rapper to actor, I was fortunate that director John Singleton pursued me for about two years to be in Boyz 'N the Hood. I really wasn't even thinking about acting at the time, since I was singularly focused on being the best rapper in the world. So, that was really a blessing, because I wasn't really taking him seriously.

Any time there's racism somewhere in sports, we should get it out of there because sports is a place where everything's supposed to be fair.

I was a very interested arts student, I was always into that part of school and when I got into high school I went into architectural drafting. It gave me an understanding of how to build things and it's really helped me put things in perspective. With my music and my movies, to me it's all art.

You like a woman, she's got kids, it's a package. You can't just go in one-sided.

I remember wishing there was snow in L.A. And how jealous we used to get of those Christmas specials with kids playing in the snow.

We come from the days when rap used to agitate the mainstream. Now it's more buddy-buddy. That doesn't sit well with me. So what we need is [a bit more] street politics, bringing up issues, agitating you a little bit. And nothing can agitate you more now than a terrorist threat.

When I was in N.W.A. and didn't get paid all the money I was owed, that's when the business side of showbiz hit me.

I love makin' music, so whether I'ma make money at it or not, I'ma still do it. The thing is, I've gotten to a point where I don't have to use music to make a livin', so I can do it for fun like I used to when I was young.

Quincy Jones' autobiography 'Q' is very good. Because he's a master at music, he's one of our greatest composers, and its good for him to have a book and tell the good ole days when he was with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles.

South Central is just who I am. Even though I have a nice house, nice family, the rest of my generation is still in South Central L.A. My cousins, my brothers, my sisters, they don't wanna move out.

I think the worst thing you can do about a situation is nothing.

When my nine goes buck, it will bust your head like a watermelon dropping 12 stories up.

I figured, when I make a movie, especially earlier in my career, one thing I was going to make sure was that the movie doesn't cost a lot and that it has potential to make a lot of money. That's how you get respect in Hollywood.

You don't wanna mess up what you've done. It's like Jordan coming back: You're scared to mess up the legacy.

I usually don't mind movies that people think go overboard because that's what art is all about. Art is about pushing us and making us examine ourselves.

I know my flavor's going to work because I just know there's not a lot of guys like me around. So you got to figure out what's that about you.

Everybody thinks the grass is greener on the other side. If you talk to most artists, they think they can play something, you know, "If I had stayed playing football in high school, if I had been doing basketball ... " Everybody's got their fantasies and thinks the grass is greener. It's not. It's not.

Young people are dying for no reason all over the world that don't know why. It's ugly, everywhere.

The devil made you a slave. Your waitin' for the devil to come from the ground. Take a look around. Just look at the cross that the priest is holdin'. A beast, in sheep's clothin'. You are the prince of darkness. Hell born, demonic.

I think, to me, reality is better than being fake.

I'm a B-boy at heart. I still like rhyming. It's just the radio game is like Chinese arithmetic. It's hard to know what nuts to crack. But I still love music, been dropping music. Never stopped, really.

You got to get used to somebody, when you're acting or going through a scene, somebody yelling, "Do it a little louder!" OK, you do it a little louder. "

If you really think back to the culture or just black America before rap music took off, New York could have been Paris.

The biggest change in the government's behavior has been because of TV and its ability to show to the world what has happened in this community ... that's the biggest change. But without TV ... the separation between the government and the people would be much worse than it is.

I did 'Are We There Yet?' because I wanted to do a movie for my fans' kids. Black kids don't really see movies on this budget for them, starring them. And there's so many white kids that love that movie.

Everybody that wants to be successful should always be careful of what you wish for. A lot of artists and entertainers want to put the genie back in the bottle and wish they could go back to being what they were.

Once you figure out what your own thing is it's all about trying to develop shows, programs that can, I guess, enhance what you already have and what you can add to Hollywood.

My son, O'Shea. He looks like me, and he can rhyme.

Comedies in Hollywood is usually the path of least resistance when it comes to being black in Hollywood and putting movies together. They would rather make us laugh than cry, in some respect.

For me rappers and dancers are poets and artists and often times the most interesting performances are given by them.

I think [director] Malcolm Lee is a real master at being able to make you laugh while bringing serious subject-matter, so the movie doesn't hinge on silliness, but on real life.

To me, in a perfect world, you have the flavor and the magic of movies like 48 Hours, Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys.

There's rumors in the Twittersphere. If I find out that any of my officer is giving out drug and alcohol I send their ass to prison with a snorkel duct-taped to their mouth and me s***ing down that Snorkel

Run DMC brought us out of that underground-only feel. They brought rap above ground and made it respectable as an art form to mainstream music.

Some comedians you work with, they only turn on when the camera turn on, and they're like sad-faced clowns when the camera's off. And then, they come alive when the camera come on. And you be like, "Oh, damn. You're not a depressed ball of depression, but you are actually funny."

While I had done the movies through Revolution Studios, we own the sitcom. It was a situation where, once the team was assembled, I knew we could create something really, really good.

I definitely know the minister Honorable Louis Farrakhan. But I don't really believe in organized religion like that. I don't know what it does for people in the long run.

I'm the most successful person in my generation of family members, and that sucks.

Today I didn't even have to even use my A.K ! I got to say it was a good day

If you give anybody the chance, they can always make a decent human being out of themselves. It's the people that don't have a chance, that we look down at like they're monsters or they're animals or that they want something different than the rest of us.

Sports without music, it's nothing but a game. Music adds the emotion.

The real is always presented. That hardcore record or movie is not needed in the hood, because it's already there. You can see it with your own eyes.

I think people, if you really want to be happy, you have to find God yourself, and you're going to have to have a personal, one-on-one relationship and not look to get through these traditions or these rituals and all this crazy stuff when you could talk to him right here, right now, anytime, anywhere, any place, from any position. And that's the kind of relationship you want, not a standard.

[Boycott Oscar] is like crying about not having enough icing on your cake. It's just ridiculous.

I've been around a lot longer than most rappers stay around. So I don't feel like, I haven't made too many career mistakes.

I'm not actually from Compton - I'm from South Central Los Angeles, and my father still lives in the same house I grew up in, so I'm there all the time.

I been all around the world and I haven't found a city that I'd rather be from or rather come back to than Los Angeles.

We'll burn your store right down to a crisp.

When you're spending your money for a nice outing, you want to go have a good time. And I always thought comedies, laughing, was something that was made for entertainment on that level. And records and maybe TV and stuff like that is really made to be heavy.

I'm not the type of actor who is trying to do a whole bunch of different stuff, you know what I mean?

You can do anything in the world if you say "Hey man, don't blame me, the devil made me do it." It's an easy way to escape responsibility.

As a husband, I'm a true partner. I don't believe one person should have dominance over another.

Anything that got to do with a pig, I ain't eatin'.

A bird in the hand is worth more than a Bush.

I've got a basketball signed by all the greats from Julius Irving to Oscar Robinson. It was at an All Star game I got them all to sign it. So that ain't going nowhere. I'm going to die with that in my casket.

I hear about people getting shot all the time. But most of the guys you hear about getting shot pulled through.

If you love what you do, and you believe in your talent, there's nothing better than breaking through. There's no better feeling than breaking through.

Early in my career, people wanted to hear music about protest, about trying to change things.

Can't step from one movie set to the next. Only Samuel L. Jackson can do that. All us mere mortals can't do that!

Sometimes when you're relegated to your neighborhood, you forget that there's more important things than your neighborhood going on out in the world.

Gangsta to us didn't have anything to do with Al Capone and stuff like that. It's just about living your life the way you want to live it. And you're not going to let nothing stop you.

I won't lay down my principles for any kind of recognition or any kind of position or trying to be more famous. It's just not in me. I'd rather be a man. And then to have all this crazy stuff on my conscience.

The moral is that a career can be gone in an instant. And all you have in this world are the people you love.

I like Obama, but I understand that his hands are tied, the way Congress is reacting. It's just partisan politics everywhere, and don't know how we going to get things done in the future without compromising a little bit.

Do not turn into just cookie-cutter producer, cookie-cutter this, but a producer that people say wow, when they do something it's great or just unique or whatever.

But with rap music - not just N.W.A. - but rap music in general, seeing these artists wearing these team logos all the time started bringing a synergy and energy about having to rep your city, your team, everywhere and all the time.

I'm not trying to turn into Eddie Murphy, and just do kids movies the rest of my career. I'm going to still do a wide variety of movies, as well as do hardcore rap.

We used to have MTV and all these ways we can show our videos, and it was these rap shows, and it was everything. And then it became not cool to be conscious; it became cool to just hang out. Escapism rap became the norm. And, when I say "escapism rap", I mean getting high, get your cars, get your money, get your jewelry, go to the club, have your women, and it just became all about escaping your reality and not making your reality better on a real tip; not just on the have fun tip.

You the devil in drag.
You can burn your cross,
Well, I'll burn your flag ...

Should I peel a cap or should I let him survive?

You pay to have a good time, you don't always want to pay to be schooled or sad or reminded how bad you got it. To me a movie theater ain't always the place for that.

'Boyz-n-the-Hood' was actually supposed to be written for Eazy's group. He had a group out in New York called Home Boys Only, called HBO. One of them looked like LL Cool J. Eazy wanted to write a song for them, a street song, like what we were doing on the mix tapes. So when I wrote it, it was too West Coast for them.

Hollywood is obsessed with police stories.

The way I grew up and the neighborhood I come from, when you know somebody's beating you and you still let it happen, then you're a victim. You're no longer a man when you know something is happening and you don't stand up. So that's just how we raised.

I'm interested in how things are put together, and that's more interesting to me than just regular shows, even though I like The Walking Dead.

"Are We There Yet?" was the perfect title, because it's such a common saying. And having made the movie with the same name kinda locks it all in.

We're in this entertainment business really to give the audience what they want.

I always tell people that if you gave me a pen and a piece of paper when I was a teenager and said, "Write out how you'd like your career to go," I would have probably short changed myself compared to what it's been for real. I'm just extremely excited about what I've accomplished.

Went to the shelf and dusted off the AK, cops gotta get pealed.

You become a writer on a television show, and you see yourself doing bigger and better things, you don't wait till they tell you, "Here's the way to do bigger and better things," you start writing. You start writing that material that you might be doing off to the side. Nobody's going to be paying you for that, but it could turn into something big.

I want to do more drama. Comedy is the path of least resistance for my company. People know we can do them. People know they get a good response. People want to make them. Who am I to push up against that?

Rap is always evolving. It's easy for the old school to hate the new school, but it's a music that got a little stifled I think, by the Internet a little bit.

Creating is really what I like to do. The best thing in the world is to have an idea in the back of your head and then to make that idea into a movie and have people all over the world enjoy it.

I'm ready to run a studio. I'm ready to green light movies, and be in it to win it, you know? It's close. It'll happen.

I never go to the Grammys. I just never go. I don't know if I care enough, and I went because my son wanted to go, and they asked us to present Best Hip Hop Group of the Year. You know, we had two records from Compton in there, and it was just like a cool thing to do, and to do with your son, and it was just cool. But we was the first award up, so after I did my thing I just jumped in the car and came on back home.

You learn that Hollywood has its own rules, sometimes. And it's tricky, and sometimes you can't see what's coming around the corner.

When I was six, God was a white man with a big beard riding on a white cloud. That's the image television pumps.

Rapping is talking and communicating, and that's always good.

As far as producing, once we started shooting, I soon realized where the critical decisions about the movies were really being made, and it wasn't on the set. They were being made in the production meetings. That's where producing a movie happens. And that's where I wanted to be. I didn't just want to be a piece, a pawn being played. I wanted to take part in the creative process, and that's how I sort of got introduced to the idea.

I love Godzilla, but my favorite was on this TV Show, Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot. I used to love the idea of having a giant robot under my control. That was like a dream come true for a kid.

I think hip-hop has changed. When I first came out, hip-hop was more of a kind of way to learn about new places, new things. What are kids doing on the East coast, what are kids doing here. Then it left that and is like a party mode. I think it's going back to people wanting to get messages and wanting to learn things from the music.

My son Darrel could recite 'Straight Outta Compton' at two years old. He loved it! You can expose your kids to anything as long as you sit there and explain it to them.

I knew a dude whose entire check was going to his car. He didn't care. This is back when the Mustang 5.0 came out in, like, '82. Between paying the note and insurance, I think he had like $40 left. A lot of people knew people because of their car, and not them.

I think that my "Let's get it done! Let's have fun! Let's make a great movie!" attitude helped. I rarely have problems on my movies with egos and attitudes.

I like to deal with things I heard about, ... People are always getting their house broken into around the holidays. That's when the crime rate goes up.