will.i.am quotes:

If you live in a ghetto and really want not to just change your life and your family's life but change your ghetto's life, make your ghetto a good neighbourhood, learn science; try to be like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

I was born and raised in East Los Angeles by a single mom who had three biological kids and adopted four more. I never met my dad.

Traveling in Europe made me understand that America has an island mentality: No one exists except us. There's a whole other world out there, but most Americans - all they know is America, the marketing plan.

If you live in a good neighborhood, you drive home and there's a bank. There's grocery stores and big houses - but no motels. What that tells you psychologically is you protect your money and buy good things for your family to eat in your nice big house.

Now that Obama's president, it changes inner-city youths. They can now not just dream to be Lil Waynes and 50 Cents, but they can now dream to be Obamas.

As we develop and get quicker with technology in America, it's like we're downgrading if you look at the investment in education... that's the thing that worries me.

I've got Republican fans. Republicans like the Black Eyed Peas.

I'm good at thinking outside the box, so much that you realise it's not a box to begin with.

If Apple's a technology company in the music industry, why can't somebody in the music industry make technology?

Politics are about preserving relationships at the end of the day, and it has nothing to do with the greater good for humanity. It's just all about business.

You can rule ignorance; you can manipulate the illiterate; you can do whatever you want when a people are uneducated, so that goes in line with corrupt business and corrupt politics.

I feel my personality is richer than my bank account. So if I meet a girl, maybe first she just likes me because I'm rich. But then she's gonna get to know me and say, 'Screw the money.'

I remember when I was 11, I told my mom, 'One day I'm going to buy you a house.' And she said, 'Boy, don't you be making promises you can't keep.' I was like: 'No, Ma, it's not a promise. I'm going to buy you a house one day.'

The music industry isn't converging toward dance music. Dance music is dance music. It's been around since disco - and way before disco. But there's different versions of dance music.

You know, the Super Bowl is so fresh that every single commercial is even on, you know, some next-level entertainment.

Black Eyed Peas is a chameleon group.

You know, I do music. If you look under the hood of the industry I'm in, it's all based on technology. From radio to phonographs to CDs, it's all technology. Microphones, reel-to-reels, cameras, editing, chips, it's all technology.

Here's the problem: Profiteers haunt America, and for everything we try to control, someone's going to profit from it, more than you control it.

Music is my therapy and my straitjacket. Music keeps me sane and keeps my mind on something. It's fragile up there.

We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don't control that. If politicians want a war we don't control that. Acts of terrorism, we can't control them.

I'm like a mama's boy and stuff.

Hip-hop was fast, originally. It was always fast music.

Love lasts forever.

If you are a chef, no matter how good a chef you are, it's not good cooking for yourself; the joy is in cooking for others - it's the same with music.

You can get your money and you put it in the bank, or you can put it in the youth. You can put it in our future.

Not many people give you a vision of what the future will bring.

Kids today aren't listening to music audio-only. They're picking up a CD and looking at the lyric sheet and wondering why the pictures aren't moving around. Who wants to do that? It's like Bam Bam Flintstone hanging with the dinosaurs vs. Elroy Jetson who's flying around space. If I'm a kid, I wanna be kicking it with Elroy.

When the music industry started collapsing, the logical people understood that the only place to go for shelter was the underground. If the world on the surface is burning up, and you know people that have bunkers, go to the bunkers.

I rescue families who are losing their homes because they have no jobs and they can't pay the mortgage and the banks are foreclosing on their homes.

I've got all this stuff in my head at the same time as I'm doing stuff and I don't know how to stop or slow down.

Disco is the first technology music. And what I mean is that 'disco' music is named after discs, because when technology grew to where they didn't need a band in the clubs, the DJ played it on a disc.

We need to forge a whole new energy and American Dream.

There's only one type of music and that's good music, no matter what genre it is.

I go out partying to figure out exactly who I'm making music for. You can't just guess.

I was born and raised in the ghetto, on welfare, two minutes from homeless.

When I got into junior high school, that's when my mom let me dress how I wanted to dress. Up to that point I wore suits to school all the time.

We need creative people working with broadcasters, making smart content to inspire people to be geniuses.

I can procrastinate a little bit.

If you would ask my mom what books I liked growing up, I liked Dr. Seuss.

How about no one's ever going to outsell Michael Jackson at selling records because the record industry is over. Game over. There's no more record stores. With no more record stores there's no more pressing plants. With no more pressing plants, there's no more charts.

I will not start an initiative until I've spent my own money. Because if I spend my own money, people who want to get on board afterwards know that I am serious about it.

I've been truly protected by my uncles.

If countries were people, England and France would be old men. Italy would be dead. Compared with them, America is in its 20s.

My attention span is very short.

If you know how to freestyle, you will never have writer's block.

There's no chivalry in culture any more. Sometimes you meet someone who everyone says is polite and you're like, 'Wow,' but then it's like, 'Hang on, isn't everyone supposed to be polite?'

Don't be afraid of the darkLook insideGrab your heartLet it shineIf it's dark outsideShine your light

You're always moving and thinking about a whole bunch of things. But those traits work well for me in studios and in meetings about creative ideas. If you listen to the songs I write, they are the most ADHD songs ever. They have five hooks in one and it all happens in three minutes. I figured out a way of working with it.

If I were a painter, I would paint beautiful bodies - I would paint nipples, and I would paint Bibles. Am I going to say, 'I'm not going to paint this woman's neck because people will think I just want to lick on necks?' Please! That's not what art is about.

It's dangerous to be a child star, but it's dangerous to be a child in the ghetto, or to be a child at school being bullied.

When you think about the guys who started Twitter, and the Google guys, and the Facebook guys and the Napster guys, and the Microsoft guys, and the Dell guys and the Instagram guys, it's all guys. The girls, they're being left behind.

I'd like to see Apple and Dell factories be brought to the inner cities; in every project in America, there's some factory there, and it's abandoned, and I'd like to see those factories open and bring jobs to America.

There are five issues that make a fist of a hand that can knock America out cold. They're lack of jobs, obesity, diabetes, homelessness, and lack of good education.

Tom Jones is like igloo-cool.

It's never a waste of time or money to invest in yourself, no matter the source. True wealth begins inwards and emits its light outward into everything else, including the people you surround yourself with.

I like all the families in the U.K. But what I like about the idea of the royal family is... they seem like they're well educated and there's something admirable about them. And the Queen... she reminds me of my grandma.

I don't need anyone to validate me.

'Transformers' inspired me as a kid.

When someone is denying what they are, then that's when things start to spiral down.

I can't be quiet, as that's when I notice the ringing in my ears.

I'm fascinated with quantum physics.

Teaming up with the scientists, researchers and computer programmers at Intel to collaborate and co-develop new ways to communicate, create, inform and entertain is going to be amazing.

But I will wear white - the whitest white! - purest most pristine white! - through the dark terrible days of winter - as no man of our time will ever dare.

Most kids are not dreaming of being programmers, scientists or engineers.

Philanthropy is the thing that I am really excited about, and having success means I can do more.

I don't have political agendas. I have social agendas.

If you have a vaccine or an antidote that people can benefit from, you're not going to want to keep it to yourself. You're going to want to spread that wisdom or whatever to as many people as you can, so everybody can benefit from it.

I have a pro tools rig that I carry in my backpack.

My favorite game is Madden. That's it. I'm a Madden addict. I go at it.

It should be mandatory that you understand computer science.

When you're a corporation, you're going to stick with what works. That's why every McDonald's is the same.

I don't dream to be like mega crazy rich.

Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex and the damage it could do to society.

If I didn't mould my reality then I'd still be in the ghetto where people like me are supposed to stay. You have to dream your way out of the nightmare.

Electro is today's disco - making electronic music not for the sake of selling it but for sharing it and touring around the world D.J.-ing.

If my mind's not trying to fix something or create something, I don't know what to do. It just throws me off.

When you follow your heart, you're never supposed to do things because of what you think people might say. You do it for the opposite reasons.

I know people in gangs; I could have went down that route.

Hip-hop is limiting itself and that also goes for editorially. Magazines and websites are the gatekeepers of what people think hip-hop is, but they actually end up limiting what hip-hop can be.

If you listen to the songs I write, they are the most ADHD songs ever. They have five hooks in one and it all happens in three minutes.

Coming out with records when you're in a big, successful group that plays stadiums, that's scary to come out by yourself.

Romantic love is painful.

I'm a fan of X-men.

Crime and violence are the easiest emotions to reenact.

There's an entry point to any relationship.

We all rely on technology to communicate, to survive, to do our banking, to shop, to get informed, but none of us knows how to read and write the code.

Although, okay, in Scotland, the boys wear the skirts. But as far as pop culture, women were on the forefront of the unisex movement and I'm grateful to you.

America has to be not just an idea but a living, breathing thing.

But Michael Jackson didn't have perfect diction - He said 'chamone' instead of 'come on'.

Code writers, they are my idols.

Every election is important and each election says it's more important than the last.

Every single song that I've listened to is in my memory forever.

Every year there's an Oscar and Grammy and we celebrate those shows. We do the same in the U.S about sports schools and colleges. The same thing doesn't happen for tech and STEM.

Every young person is going to be inspired to be a maker from now on. It's like how everyone used to want to be a musician, an actor, an athlete -- but a maker is what people are going to want to be.

Fashion is becoming the same thing as our devices.

Folks wanna be like Will I Am not Bill I Am. They wanna be like Stevie Wonder not Steve Jobs.

Great coders are today's rock stars.

Have different people in your fold. Have cross-disciplinary collaborations.

I am trying to encourage kids to do something that isn't yet on their mind because it is not in popular culture. Popular culture tells you 'music, music, sports, sports.' It neglects the importance of a STEM education.

I can like something. You can like something. It's not an absolute.

I can't sing "I Believe I Can Fly". I sing that horrible. But I can sing "I Gotta Feeling" good. I wrote it for my capabilities. So I Gotta Feeling is just about let me make a song to inspire people to have a good time.

I don't follow waves or trends or emotions.

I don't wanna believe that racism exists, but the more I wish it away, the more I realize it's in our system.

I don't want to hope anymore. I don't think we should hope anymore. We hoped enough. Now we have to do. We all have to do now.

I don't want to tell people where to go get all my cool stuff.

I love India, Russia and touring has made me many friends abroad.

I love the Asian countries.

I read Twitter all the time, even though I rarely tweet.

If Bill Gates left Microsoft we wouldn't allow Donald Trump to run it.

If you look at the world now its one that we couldn't have imagined in 1997! That I would be able to hit a button and a taxi will show up? We wouldn't have believed that everything is disposable!

If you really want change, you really want it to be inclusive, where everyone's included, otherwise you're just going to have more of the same in the future.

If you want to be a better musician, hang out with a computer coder.

If you want to be a better web hacker, hang out with a painter.

I'm a citizen of the U.S.A but I also travel around the world and love other countries like the UK as if it was my own. I love your tolerance and preservation of the arts.

I'm from east LA. I don't see colour.

In future we'll have a different type of rich and poor.

It's ironic that this amazing invention of the Internet has made information gathering easier available than ever, but that this platform also helps spread misinformation.

It's my hope to inspire kids around the world to want to be tech stars in stem subjects.

Likeminded folks shop in the same circles.