Top 80 Will.i.am Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Waste is only waste if we waste it.”

— Will.i.am

2. “Great coders are today’s rock stars.”

— Will.i.am

3. “Music is my therapy and my straitjacket. Music keeps me sane and keeps my mind on something. It’s fragile up there.”

— Will.i.am

4. “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.”

— Will.i.am

5. “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.”

— Will.i.am

6. “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.”

— Will.i.am

7. “Code writers, they are my idols.”

— Will.i.am

8. “There are leaders and there are followers. Followers follow leaders and leaders follow their heart.”

— Will.i.am

9. “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.”

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

11. “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.”

— Will.i.am

12. “Things don’t have to end. They can begin again.”

— Will.i.am

13. “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.”

— Will.i.am

14. “The world doesn’t need another opinion, they need another person taking action. So I take action because I see the call and respond.”

— Will.i.am

15. “Look at the world. See the problem. And solve it.”

— Will.i.am

16. “I don’t follow waves or trends or emotions.”

— Will.i.am

17. “The Black Eyed Peas sell thousands of seats in every country on the planet. You can’t get nervous. We’re all succeeding in all different parts of our careers. Just because I produce Nas and John Legend and Justin Timberlake doesn’t mean it will change the dynamic of the Peas.”

— Will.i.am

18. “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.”

— Will.i.am

19. “There’s only one type of music and that’s good music, no matter what genre it is.”

— Will.i.am

20. “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?’”

— Will.i.am

21. “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.”

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

23. “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.”

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

25. “The computer allows me to execute my ideas at the speed I think them.”

— Will.i.am

26. “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.”

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

30. “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.”

— Will.i.am

31. “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.”

— Will.i.am

32. “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.”

— Will.i.am

33. “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.”

— Will.i.am

34. “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.”

— Will.i.am

35. “I’m fascinated with quantum physics.”

— Will.i.am

36. “What Autotune allows is for people like myself and Kanye West not to depend on the singer. Back in the Fifties, the songwriter was rendered invisible. Now the songwriter is there in the forefront.”

— Will.i.am

37. “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.”

— Will.i.am

38. “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.”

— Will.i.am

39. “My mom’s never been married. I’ve never even seen my mom kiss a dude.”

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

43. “Tom Jones is like igloo-cool.”

— Will.i.am

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

— Will.i.am

45. “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.”

— Will.i.am

46. “Crime and violence are the easiest emotions to reenact.”

— Will.i.am

47. “When someone is denying what they are, then that’s when things start to spiral down.”

— Will.i.am

48. “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.”

— Will.i.am

49. “Every single song that I’ve listened to is in my memory forever.”

— Will.i.am

50. “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.”

— Will.i.am