Shakur: “I'm not saying I'm gonna rule the world, or change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world. And that's our job - to spark someone else watching us."

Shakur: "Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real."

Shakur: "If God wanted me to be quiet he would've never showed me what he does."

Shakur: "We talk a lot about Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr., but It's time to be like them, as strong as them. They were mortal men like us and everyone of us can be like them. I don't want to be a role model. I just want to be someone who says, this is who i am, this is what i do. I say what's on my mind."

Shakur: "I think I'm a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it's authority that I respect."

Shakur: "I believe honestly that I can talk. I believe that I have the ability to reason, I have logic, I have compassion, I have understanding. If we talk there's no problem you know what I'm saying. But that's not what happened. People used what they heard in media and that's how they come at me, and then you know we got a clash."

Shakur: "I am societies child, this is how they made me, and now I'm sayin what's on my mind and they don't want that. This is what you made me America."

Shakur: “I want to see a true picture. I don’t care if [a Rap critic] feels uncomfortable. ‘Cause what about when I felt uncomfortable for 400 years? Now, all of a sudden it’s bad to talk about [reality]…what we’re doing is using our brains to get out of the ghetto any way we can. So we tell these stories, and they tend to be violent. Because our world tends to be filled with violence…that’s all my music is about: the oppressed rising up against the oppressor. So the only ones that’s scared are the oppressors.”

Shakur: "I don't have no fear of death. My only fear is coming back reincarnated."

Shakur: "We as rappers brought the violence that we saw on the streets and put it on our records. We put it on our records for years. And after three, four years, people are finally starting to see it [and review] the statistics that’s goin’ on in the streets. If we wouldn’t talk about it, then they wouldn’t take statistics. And if they don’t take statistics, then we’d be killing each other in the street and these white people wouldn’t care no more. The only reason they [might] care is ‘cause there [would be] some stray [bullets] and we done slipped up in a White neighborhood."

Shakur: "The only thing America respects is power and power concedes nothing. After the LA Riots, they tried to calm us down and nothing changed since"

Shakur: "I'm a reflection of the community."

Shakur: "I don't see myself being special; I just see myself having more responsibilities than the next man. People look to me to do things for them, to have answers."

Shakur: "I'm 23 years old. I might just be my mother's child, but in all reality, I'm everybody's child. Nobody raised me; I was raised in this society."

Shakur: "What I learned in jail is that I can't change. I can't live a different lifestyle - this is it. This is the life that they gave and this is the life that I made."

[On wealth inequality]

Shakur: "There's too much money here. No one should be hitting the lotto for $36 million, and we got people starving in the streets. That is not idealistic, that's just real. That is just stupid. There's no way Michael Jackson, or whoever Jackson, should have a million-thousand-quadruple-billion dollars, and then there's people starving. There's no way! There's no way that these people should own [their own] planes, and there are people don't have houses, apartments, shacks, drawers, pants!!"

Shakur: "If you can make it through the night, there’s a brighter day."

Shakur: "It always happens, all the n***** that change the world die, they don't get to die like regular people, they die violently"

Shakur: "I believe that everything that you do bad comes back to you. So everything that I do that's bad, I'm going to suffer from it. But in my mind, I believe what I'm doing is right. So I feel like I'm going to heaven."

Shakur: "I feel like role models today are not meant to be put on a pedestal. But more like angels with broken wings"

Shakur: "If we really are saying rap is an art form, then we got to be more responsible for our lyrics. If you see everybody dying because of what you saying, it don’t matter that you didn’t make them die, it just matters that you didn’t save them."

[Him on the music industry]

Shakur: “I’m getting pimped [by record labels and executives], that’s true…but it’s not that you get pimped, it’s how long that you get pimped. If you really look at the situation, it’s not I who am getting pimped. If you look at the white kids with Raiders hats on, them white folks [are] getting pimped. I’m making their future; I’m writing down their curriculum right now. What I write in my album today, when it comes out in two months, that’s what white kids is doing. So who really is getting pimped? What I write in my raps is what them white kids gonna be saying to their mamas and daddys when they come home. So who really is getting pimped?”

Shakur: "I think this country still is run on gangs - Republicans, Democrats, the Police Department, the FBI, the CIA - those are gangs. Even the correctional officers. I had a correctional officer tell me straight up: 'We the biggest gang in New York state.'"

Shakur: "My mama always used to tell me: 'If you can't find somethin' to live for, you best find somethin' to die for.'"

Shakur: “I had no police record until I made a record. As my video was debuting on MTV, I was behind bars; I was picked up by the police department. I had a $10 million lawsuit…you don’t see pictures of me with my eye busted and my head busted, you don’t see those pictures. You see pictures of Tupac coming out of jail in cuffs. You don’t see pictures of the police standing over me beating my brains in. You don’t see that. But I see that. That’s what I see. It’s all real.”

Shakur: "I'm 23 years old. I might just be my mother's child, but in all reality, I'm everybody's child. Nobody raised me; I was raised in this society."

Shakur: "I just don't know how to deal with so many people giving me that much affection. I never had that in my life."

Shakur: "I worked hard all my life as far as this music business. I dreamed of the day when I could go to New York and feel comfortable and they could come out here and be comfortable."

Shakur: "Though are hands are chained like they are, they haven't taken music from us yet. So that's how I'll fight. People tell me don't quit like everyone else. I won't have no fear."

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."

Shakur: “All I ever wanted to do was go to college–ask my mama. I went to school all the way, was ready to go to college. The only thing that stopped me was money. At the time all the kids in my school was writing applications to go to college, I didn’t have no lights and no electricity. And that ain’t my mama’s fault. So when I think back on that, 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. If thuggin’ is gonna make me a million bucks, ‘cause I just went platinum, then that’s what I’m gonna do. Constantly.”