B.B. King Quotes

The unconscious mind writes poetry if it's left alone.

It is my firm belief that I have a link with the past and a responsibility to the future. I cannot give up. I cannot despair. There's a whole future, generations to come. I have to keep trying.

Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.

When aroused the American conscience is a powerful force for reform.

How empty is theory in the presence of fact!

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

There is no wealth but life.

The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.

The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.

In war, our elders may give the orders...but it is the young who have to fight.

When Good Friday comes, these are the moments in life when we feel there's no hope. But then, Easter comes.

May be she’ll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life but the end of pain.

Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway.

I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami.

In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and, ultimately, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism.

Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozy, and don't be afraid to hit the ball.

That which we call wit consists much in quickness and tricks, and is so full of lightness that it seldom goes with judgment and solidity; but when they do meet, it is commonly in an honest man.

People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.

Violence diminishes our humanity.

There is nothing in your destiny, nothing in your future that you cannot accomplish.

Be an artist at whatever you do. Even if you are a street sweeper, be the Michelangelo of street sweepers.

Workers in industry are the partners in war of the fighting forces.

You see, the problem with me is I'm so good even my friends think I'm doing something wrong. Flair and flamboyance is not illegal. It may be detestable, it may be offensive, but it's not illegal.

I always listen, I ask children, I even ask adults in tennis, "What are your children playing?" And most of the time it's not tennis. It's pathetic.

Millions of citizens are deeply disturbed that the military-industrial complex too often shapes national policy, but they do not want to be considered unpatriotic.

I'm a person who is always trying to write in a different vein.

Violence multiplies violence.

Every crisis has both its dangers and its opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom.

I'm the worst person to be stuck with in a traffic jam.

It's not the people in the South who create racial problems - it's the people who are governing.

Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but it certainly freshens the eye.

Let's face it: It's difficult enough to be funny without worrying about what is going to offend whom.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

School takes 13 years, because that is how long it takes to break a child's spirit.

Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Far more has been accomplished for the welfare and progress of mankind by preventing bad actions than by doing good ones.

I realize I will always be the poster child for police brutality, but I can try to use that as a positive force for healing and restraint.

People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done.

Nothing remains static in war or military weapons, and it is consequently often dangerous to rely on courses suggested by apparent similarities in the past.

If we do an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will be a blind and toothless nation.

I think most of us are fascinated by the macabre and by the weird and even the nastiness that comes along.

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself.

I like entrepreneurial people; I like people who take risks.

Every baby saved, every mother helped to choose life is a step in the right direction.

We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.... a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.