Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.
Jay-ZRead
[T]he truth is that drug addicts have a disease. It only takes a short time in the streets to realize that out-of-control addiction is a medical problem, not a form of recreational or criminal behavior. And the more society treats drug addiction as a crime, the more money drug dealers will make "relieving" the suffering of the addicts.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Drug addiction is a disease that should be treated medically rather than criminally.
Jay-Z emphasizes that drug addiction should not be viewed merely as a criminal issue but rather as a medical condition. By framing addiction as a disease, he argues that society can better address the root causes and help those suffering, rather than perpetuating their suffering through criminalization, which ultimately benefits drug dealers.
Themes
AddictionDiseaseTreatmentSocietyMedicalCriminal
In practice
Example use cases
In a public health discussion on approaches to drug rehabilitation.
More from Jay-Z
All quotes βThe most amazing feeling I feel_x000D_ _x000D_ Words can't describe what I'm feeling for real _x000D_ _x000D_ Maybe I paint the sky blue _x000D_ _x000D_ My greatest creation was you.
Jay-ZRead
Far from a Harvard student, just had the balls to do it
Jay-ZRead
I never ask for nothin' I don't demand of myself. Honesty, loyalty, friends and then wealth
Jay-ZRead
It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.
Jay-ZRead
I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper bag. And I'd write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.
Jay-ZRead
Similar quotes
Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation. When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.
Edwin Hubbel ChapinRead
If we remain grotesquely unequal, we shall lose all sense of fraternity: and fraternity, for all its fatuity as a political objective, turns out to be the necessary condition of politics itself.
Tony JudtRead
We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
Napoleon BonaparteRead
A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done.
Margaret AtwoodRead