I kept talking to my producers at Columbia about recording one of those [prison] shows. So we went into Folsom on February 11, 1968, and recorded a show live.

If you aren't gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.

I love the freedoms we got in this country, I appreciate your freedom to burn your flag if you want to, but I really appreciate my right to bear arms so I can shoot you if you try to burn mine.

You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.

Life is rough so you gotta be tough.

There's a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there's a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.

Life and love go on, let the music play.

I learn from my mistakes. It’s a very painful way to learn, but without pain, the old saying is, there’s no gain.

it's good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people

There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I'm the biggest sinner of them all.

Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.

The channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.

You ever wonder if Adam and Eve were just the puppies God dumped because they wouldn't house-train?

This grieved me heartily ; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.

The band was rejuvenated by that wonderful day. It breathed new life into us.

Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right."

When something undesirable grows in my soul, I ask God to give me the courage to mercilessly pluck it out.

The transformation of nature, a total fusion of science, art and technology in a sublime statement of human dignity and intelligence through the settlements we build for ourselves.

I won't go to places where you're going to find more attention. I go to the opposite.

You get thrown off balance out there. And I never recovered. Well, I haven't recovered yet.

Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency about "what's needed."