You can't cheat the public for long.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

I snapped my fingers all through it. Sometimes I set my own tempo during rehearsal by doing that.

I tell you, I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rockers!

Sixteen Tons was written eight years before I recorded it.

Know yourself -- and know your audience.

When you do a show five days a week and one night a week, the way I was doing, you use up so much music every day that pretty soon you find yourself hustling for material.

Do you want to be successful? Nurture your talent.

Shot Gun Boogie, I wanted wedding bells. I'll be back little gal, when your pappy runs out of shells.

If you see me coming, better step aside. A lotta men didn't, a lotta men died.

You can keep rummaging around until you find a song you like, but you can't predict whether it'll hit or not.

Under the penitential gatesSustained by staring SeraphimWhere the souls of the devoutBurn invisible and dim.

In the global marketplace of the future the price of every product will tell the ecological truth.

I started drinking Scotch just to be a man.

Word-carpentry is like any other kind of carpentry: you must join your sentences smoothly.

One of the many reasons why I love stand-up so much is when you're performing, you get instant feedback. You know if stuff is working right away.

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.

My home is a place of warmth and love. No one should be denied a home.

There is a temptation in politics to look for simplistic slogans and to play the game in a way that looks like you're a savvy politician.

Modernity needs to understand that being rich and becoming rich are not mathematically, personally, socially, and ethically the same thing.

Just because you can't do everything, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do what you can.