“I sang for my family. And I think probably the first time I sang and got paid for it, I was about 6 or 7.”

On Saturday afternoons, there was a film, of course, and then we did about four shows between the films. And I would do a tap dance, a little military tap.

The place that seems most dangerous is exactly where safety lies.

New Year’s Eve, we’re going to be doing a concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Symphony Hall. It makes me feel good, because of all the people they could have had, they wanted me! We do have to do a little work with the rhythm section.

I have absolutely no desire and no thought of quitting ever.

Young people who are just starting out somehow need to let you know they know how to sing.

If you’re able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence.

The world wants us to be who we truly are, not who we think others want us to be.

If you’re happy, you eat. If you’re sad, you eat. You lose a job, you eat. You get a job, you eat. It’s, you know, it’s addiction.

Even within the last three or four years, I have a greater ability to communicate, I think. I have more courage to show the stuff… And it does take courage.

What actors need to do is to find a way to show people their despair, their joy, their pain, their exhilaration. All of these deep, deep emotional things – good and bad – so that if you’re able to do that, then there’s a kind of resonance that happens.

I look back at photographs and I remember at the time I thought I was not very attractive.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

As Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my first responsibility is to the taxpayer.

Speculation in oil stock companies was another great evil … From the first, oil men had to contend with wild fluctuations in the price of oil. …

If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green…

I also maintain that clear knowledge of natural science must be acquired, in the first instance, through mastery of medicine alone.

If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.

The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else — men, guns, ammunition.

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.