It really is an honor if I can be inspirational to a younger singer or person. It means I've done my job.

We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It's our basic human right.

Be your own artist, and always be confident in what youre doing. If youre not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it.

Soul is a constant. It's cultural. It's always going to be there, in different flavors and degrees.

I'm a big woman. I need big hair.

If you disrespect everybody that you run into, how in the world do you think everybody's supposed to respect you?

People really don't have to give you anything, so appreciate what people give you. And just don't let that go to your head, whatever it is they give you.

Don't say Aretha is making a comeback, because I've never been away!

Falling out of love is like losing weight. It's a lot easier putting it on than taking it off.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.

My faith always has been and always will be important to me.

some people are so deepyou fall into themand you never stop falling.

It is easier to define whether or not you can afford something than whether you need it in the first place.

I was born an American I live an American I shall die an American.

Now I lay me down to sleep my bomb proof cellar's good and deep but if i'm killed before I wake remember god it's for your sake amen.

We believe in constitutional action in normal times; we believe in revolutionary action in exceptional times.

Your brain is not formed when you're born. You have to build your brain.

He was transfixed at the sight of the lords and ladies of his realm running about like demented chickens.

He that hath deserved hanging may be glad to escape with a whipping.

I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.

Physiological psychology, on the other hand, is competent to investigate the relations that hold between the processes of the physical and those of the mental life.