“If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myse...” — J. Cole Quote

“If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myself, like I wasted a day. My most productive hours are between midnight and five.”

“My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl's grandmother and family right here. Friends over there. That's my real dream.”

“One day, I'll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it's nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.”

“I want people to follow their dreams, yes... but I'm not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers... I want to show them that there's so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.”

“No rapper in the world from Jay-Z to Tupac to Biggie has 100 percent love on everything they do.”

“I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.”

“There's a difference between fair game and playing games.”

“What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.”

“It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.”

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

“Contention does not usually begin as strife between countries. More often, it starts with an individual, for we can contend within ourselves over simple matters of right and wrong. From there, contention can infect neighbors and nations like a spreading sore.”

“We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.”