“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.”

I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I’m not going.

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

Desegregation is a joke.

The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else’s. That’s always been my dream.

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don’t think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.

If I get an idea I put it on tape and somebody else writes it out.

I’m a real rebel with a cause.

When a child is gifted, people try to help that child.

Theory and harmony broadened my mind in music. I know what music is made of.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

I know I’m different, but I don’t think about it.

I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I’ve done my whole life, without thought.

Art is self expression. If you are expressing someone else’s personality, that is not art.

When one is perfectly still-mind and body, silent and alone-there is no personality to speak of, thus personality is one’s unique way of expression, it is what others see and know of us, nothing more or deeper than that.

Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times-the pulse of today.

Morality, and the ideal of freedom which is the political expression of morality, are not the property of a given party or group, but a value that is fundamentally and universally human… No people will be truly free till all are free.

Attitudes on campuses often presage tendencies in the larger society. If that is so with respect to freedom of expression, the erosion of principle we have seen throughout our society in recent years may be only the beginning.

I never show the back of my tongue. That is a Dutch expression.

Love is the ultimate giving, an expression of one’s best self.

Painters ought to be mute. Speech is the enemy of expression.