“Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.”

You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.

Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I’m singing her music or not.

Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.

Music is a gift and a burden I’ve had since I can remember who I was.

I love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I’d rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I’ll leave it to them.

Life is short. People are not easy to know. They’re not easy to know, so if you don’t tell them how you feel, you’re not going to get anywhere, I feel.

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 do know this: God does answer your prayers, but it’s not always in the way you expect.

God answers prayers, but he doesn’t always answer it your way.

The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.

Win any way you can as long as you can get away with it.

When I die, and people realize that I will not be resurrected in three days, they will forget me. That is the way it should be.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

Been in this game one-hundred years, but I see new ways to lose ’em I never knew existed before.

If you don’t believe in winning, you don’t believe in free enterprise, capitalism, our way of life.