“Sing such a song with all of your heart that you’ll never have to sing again.”

I do not quote from the scriptures; I simply see what I see.

The truth of love is the truth of the universe: it is the lamp of the soul that reveals the secrets of darkness.

Don’t open your diamonds in a vegetable market. Tie them in bundle and keep them in your heart, and go your own way.

Nada is found within. It is a music without strings which plays in the body. It penetrates the inner and outer and leads you away from illusion.

Look at you, you madman! Screaming you are thirsty and dying in a desert, when all around you there is nothing but water!

All know that the drop merges into the ocean but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.

The sun is within me and so is the moon.

Stand firm in that which you are.

The man who is kind and who practices righteousness, who remains passive against the affairs of the world, who considers all creatures on earth as his own self, he attains the Immortal Being; the true God is ever with him.

Men have always looked before and after, and rebelled against the existing order. But for their divine discontent, men would not have been men, and there would have been no progress in human affairs.

The stone neither speaks nor gives anything. Therefore its service is fruitless and its worship is of no avail.

Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation. Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound.

As long as I talked unceasingly about the Lord,The Lord stayed away, kept at a distance.But when I silenced my mouth, sat very stillAnd fixed my mind at the doorway of the Lord,I was linked to the music of the Word,And all my talking came to an end.

Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath.

Are you looking for the Holy One? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours.

If you haven’t experienced it, it’s not true.

The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.

The only thing better than singing is more singing.

The first time I heard Clyde McPhatter singing with the Dominoes at the Apollo I just fell off my chair

I came close to signing Elvis Presley. I offered $25,000 for his contract and they asked for $45,000 and I just didn’t have the other $20,000.

People like Clyde McPhatter who came out of the black churches – like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin – were all church singers who became great pop singers because gospel singing is very close to the blues.

The piano and the singing are two equal things to me – maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices.

My singing, if you want to call it that is merely another medium of expression. Just an instrument I play. That’s how I see my voice.

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band’s lead singer, Eric Burdon. “So you’re the honky,” she said, “who stole my song and got a hit out of it?