You're blessed if you have the strength to work.

Faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul; man cannot live in health without them.

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong.

It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.

Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth.

God can make you anything you want to be, but you have to put everything in his hands.

Baby, black promoters oppressed me before white promoters ever got hold of me. Don't talk skin to me.

Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have the feeling there is a cure for what's wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on.

I sing God's music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.

Without a song, each day would be a century.

We are in the process of disabling our most distinctive achievement - our educational system - in the name of making the country more like itself.

New beginnings come with the tail of the red-winged blackbird. Here’s to hoping my daddy was right.

Each "way of thinking" has its own shape and color, which wax and wane like the moon.

If a theory can not be explained to a child, then the theory is probably worthless.

A lot of people had to die for me to be me.

A bird in the hand is worth more than a Bush.

There have been times when I have failed. But there have never been times when I thought I would fail

He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory.

This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence overcomes me and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.

The views of the multitude are neither bad nor good. [Lat., Neque mala, vel bona, quae vulgus putet.]