Over the years, West has said, posted and deleted tons of opinions, questions and provocations. He told Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church congregation that “the greatest artist that God has ever created [him] is working for him,” but he was equally passionate about the cherub imagery that was not on the Persian rugs he ordered, thank you very much! Whatever you think of him, reading through the following 100 Kanye West quotes might leave you more tickled and inspired than you expect. Kanye West quotes
- “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you. Imma let you finish. But Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.”
- “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
- “I understand culture. I am the nucleus.”
- “People be feeling like I’m cocky because of the st that I say; if you could imagine the st that I think.”
- “If I meet someone I respect or look up to, I will literally kiss their feet.”
- “I’m not comfortable with comfort. I’m only comfortable when I’m in a place where I’m constantly learning and growing.”
- “I’ve had meetings where a guy actually told me, ‘What we’re trying to figure out is how we can control you.” In the meeting, to me! Why do you want to control me?’”
- “My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater. That always sounds so funny to people, comparing yourself to someone in the past that has done so much, and in your life you’re not even allowed to think that you can do as much. That’s a mentality that suppresses humanity.”
- “If you put your heart into something and you had a grasp of what was really good and you knew you delivered a good product, you have the right to defend your product after people criticize it.”
- “Most people are slowed down by the perception of themselves. If you’re taught you can’t do anything, you won’t do anything. I was taught I can do everything.”
- “For me, first of all, dopeness is what I like the most. Dopeness. People who want to make things as dope as possible, and, by default, make money from it.”
- “I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.”
- “People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‘Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.”
- “I paid a million! It took a month to film! I stood on a mountain! I flew a helicopter over Vegas! I did it to be the king of all videos!”
- “If I don’t win, the award show loses credibility.”
- “I hate when someone comes and works with me for a couple weeks or two months, and then they try to tell people they’ve worked with Kanye West. You haven’t worked with Kanye West unless you’ve had to redo a project 100 times, or had to word something in a specific, perfect way, to communicate it in the exact.”
- “Classical music is tight yo.”
- “Everyone’s always telling you to be humble. When was the last time someone told you to be great?”
- “A whole album with Paul McCartney can become a single for Rihanna… Scooter Braun is Kanye West’s gateway drug to business and maybe the death of the music industry as we know it.”
- “So I’m going to be one of the biggest real estate developers of all time, what Howard Hughes was to airlines, and what Henry Ford was to cars, and just the relationships I have to architects…I’m tired of the McMansions. That s**t is wack. It’s trash bruh…Unless it’s Howard Backen. We’re going to develop cities."
- “I love the fact that I’m bad at [things], you know what I’m saying? I’m forever the 35-year-old 5-year-old. I’m forever the 5-year-old of something.”
- “I’m way nicer to people in general…but when people start playing games, I stop… Any moment, I hit that ‘Ye button. Right back to day 1.”
- “Similar to Tesla, I’m about lighting the world up.”
- “I knew when I wrote the line ‘light-skinned friend look like Michael Jackson’ [from the song “Slow Jamz”] I was going to be a big star.”
- “Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.”
- “Go open up a book and read yourself to death.”
- “If you have the opportunity to play this game called life, you have to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate their moment until it’s passed.”
- “The idea of Kanye and vanity are like, synonymous. But I’ve put myself in a lot of places where a vain person wouldn’t put themselves in. Like what’s vanity about wearing a kilt?”
- “I always tell people ‘I dropped out of school in order to learn.”
- “That’s my skill. I’m not really specifically talented at anything except for the ability to learn. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m here for.”
- “‘Jesus Walks’ is a trick. They told me it would never be played on a radio, so the second verse is reverse psychology for program directors.”
- “I don’t think people are going to talk in the future. They’re going to communicate through eye contact, body language, emojis, signs. Imagine that. If everyone was forced to learn sign language.”
- “My doorman is more important to me than the head of any company…He keeps me safe…My driver keeps me safe…He’s more important than anyone who walks in that house and grabs a glass of champagne.”
- “I just threw some kazoo on this b**ch.”
- “If anyone’s reading this waiting for some type of full-on, flat apology for anything, they should just stop reading right now.”
- “You know, if Michael Jordan can scream at the refs, me as Kanye West, as the Michael Jordan of music, can go and say, ‘This is wrong.’”
- “Man … ninjas are kind of cool … I just don’t know any personally”
- “This is turning into a 12-minute freestyle. Which is good. When I talk it’s like a painting.”
- “So, the voices in my head told me to go, and then I just walked up, like, halfway up the stage… But I just didn’t really want to take away from Beck’s moment, or the time he’s having to talk. It was kind of a joke – like the Grammys themselves.”
- “I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.”
- “It was heartbreaking for me to have to leave Nike, but they refused to allow me to get royalty on my shoe. And I knew I had the hottest shoe in the world. I knew Yeezy was the hottest brand in the world.”
- “I think people think that I pander to fashion…But I believe that the world can only be saved through design…Art is to be free. Design is to fix.”
- “More people need to know that they’re not f**king cool. In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28. It’s either die at 28 or turn in your cool pass.”
- “I specifically ordered persian rugs with cherub imagery!!! What do I have to do to get a simple persian rug with cherub imagery uuuuugh”
- “Do you know where to find marble conference tables? I’m looking to have a conference…not until I get the table though.”
- “For some reason, I just wanna say “Wiz [Khalifa] wears cool pants” right now. He really does. He dresses really good.”
- “And really since the Taylor Swift moment, it’s never been the same, that connection with radio. Whatever powers that be, it was much harder after that….the radio element was just one of the factors.”
- “If you’re an artist and you’re signed to a major label, you want to be on the radio, especially if you’re popular, if you’re one of the most famous people on the planet and people love your music.”
- “Sometimes I push the door close button on people running towards the elevator. I just need my own elevator sometimes, my 7 floor sanctuary.”
- “I would like to thank Julius Caesar for originating my hairstyle.”
- “Is Illuminati and devil worshipping like the same thing…do they have a social network that celebs can sign up for?”
- “I hate when I’m on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.”
- “It’s a tough world out there. You’re going to prepare yourself for politics, bad bosses, hating employees, and usually when you’re the absolute best, you get hated on the most.”
- “If you ask me a question like what is your greatest accomplishment, it should be what I’m about to do.”
- “I am so credible and so influential and so relevant that I will change things.”
- “I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump. I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it’s like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z.”
- “I’ve been connected to the most culturally important albums of the past four years, the most influential artists of the past ten years.”
- “In my house, I don’t have plaques. I don’t have no awards. My greatest award is what I’m about to do. I’m always thinking about the future. The only thing I put up in my house is artwork.”
- “Now, the greatest artist that God has ever created is working for him.”
- “My beats was wack at one point, dog…I learned how to make hot beats. I’m focusing on rhyming now and I’m going to be the f**king best.”
- “I don’t even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.”
- “I never put anybody down to big myself up. I just big myself up.”
- “Maybe 90 percent of the time it looks like I’m not having a good time.”
- “My definition of genius is not being that person the actual human is a genius, but it’s a person that just allows God to work through them.”
- “How the he** is a 29-year-old grown-ass man acting like a little b**ch and getting all emotional? How spoiled can I get?”
- “As a celebrity, as soon as you become a star, as soon as it pops off for you? At that point, you stop growing. As soon as you don’t have to wash your own dishes anymore. I was like trying to get somebody to jog for me the other day.”
- “You can’t look at a glass half full or empty if it’s overflowing.”
- “A lot of people were wondering what I was going to do if I didn’t win anything. I guess we’ll never know.”
- “I don’t be saying people are wack. I just give props to people I like because I know the power that I have, and I don’t want to take money or food out of no man’s mouth. Who am I to say what’s wack?”
- “Yo, how am I supposed to talk when you if you’re going to run the [clip] in the middle of when I’m talking.”
- “I’ve known my mom since I was zero years old. She is quite dope.”
- “I feel like if a rapper dissing me, they’re just trying to get a rise out of me and get me to play in their field to find some way that they can beat me. I feel like there’s a lot of rappers that can beat me in ignorance. So why would I play a sport that I’m not particularly trying to get better at or beaten in? There’s a lot of rappers that can beat me in ignorance, but there’s only a few that can play with true intellect. How fking perfect is that fking answer?!”
- “Creative output, you know, is just pain. I’m going to be cliché for a minute and say that great art comes from pain.”
- “Yeah. I’m rich and I’m famous, but I try not to be extra with it.”
- “There were times where I was asking people not to have premarital sex while they were working on the album.”
- “I always misspell genius SMH! The irony!”
- “Sometimes I get emotional over fonts.”
- “When I see an outsider infiltrate, I connect with that. I like that it showed you that anything is possible. Virgil working at Louis Vuitton, Trump in office, it’s time for the unconventional. I’m not a traditional thinker, I’m a nonconformist so that relates to the nonconformist part of me.”
- “For the greatest artist in human existence to put a red hat on was God’s practical joke to all liberals. Like, ‘No! Not Kanye!’”
- ”….hmmmmm what to wear… here I go again… Yeezy the trend setter or complete f**king fashion victim … the verdict is still out”
- “Jay is Kweli’s favorite rapper, 50 is Eminem’s favorite rapper, and I’m my favorite rapper.”
- “There couldn’t be a better time to put a visionary in the captain’s chair,” he adds. “I believe that my calling is to be the leader of the free world. It was something that God put on my heart back in 2015.”
- “One of my biggest Achilles heels has been my ego. And if I, Kanye West, the very person, can remove my ego, I think there’s hope for everyone.”
- “With God, I’ve been able to beat things that had control over me. Some people drown themselves in drugs, I drowned myself in my addiction, sex.”
- “I went from having confidence and arrogance to having faith, and faith is the opposite of fear. And that created this fearless approach that I have.”
- “Friends wasn’t funny either.”
- “Any woman that you’re in love with or that loves you is going to command a certain amount of, you know, energy. It’s actually easier to focus, in some ways.”
- “Well, I just don’t want to talk to America about my family. Like, this is my baby. This isn’t America’s baby.”
- “My solace comes from seeing my kids and getting a solid schedule. That’s why I even got the house. They flipped it in the media like it was something wrong with me getting a house next to my kids.”
- “It’s nothing where my career, rap, this media, none of that, that’s going to keep me from my children, and that’s what I want everybody to know. Don’t play with me, don’t play with my children, and ain’t no security gonna get between me and my children; and you ain’t finna gaslight me and you ain’t gonna run this narrative on me.”
- “Since this is my first divorce I need to know what I should do about my daughter being put on TikTok against my will?”
- “Stop asking me to do NFT’s I’m not finna co-sign … for now I’m not on that wave I make music and products in the real world.”
- “My focus is on building real products in the real world, real food, real clothes, real shelter. Do not ask me to do a f**king NFT.”
- “I refuse to accept other people’s ideas of happiness for me. As if there’s a ‘one size fits all’ standard for happiness.”
- “I’ma make a book of my tweets.. Tweetbook”
- “They started making more Ye’s.”
- “There are people who have figured out the exact, you know, Kanye West formula, the mix between “Graduation” and “808s,” and were able to become more successful at it.”
- “I told you I’m only afraid of God, I’m afraid of my daddy, God.”
- “Instagram got your b**ch…social media doing more to hurt families… and families are the key to health.”
- “Put this in the magazine: There’s nothing more to be said about music. I’m the f**king end-all, be-all of music.” Next, Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ Net Worth Will Kost Ya! Find Out How Much Money Kim, Kylie And Their Siblings Really Have