“You can ask the people around me. I don’t give up. I don’t give up. I don’t give – and it’s not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don’t give up. I don’t give up because I don’t give up. I don’t believe in it.”

Those that have lived longer than us always have something to teach us, that we can take with us for the rest of our lives.

If you have political convictions. Keep ’em to yourself

You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.

Life is – the way God has given it to me was just a platter – a golden platter of life laid out there for me. It’s been beautiful.

When I’m gone I’ll be remembered as the workin’ man who put his point across with a right hand full of knuckles.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.

Deep in the heart of the infinite darkness, a tiny blue marble is spinning through space. Born in the splendor of God’s holy vision, and sliding away like a tear down his face.

When God forgave me, I figured I’d better do it too.

Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform to.

Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free.

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time.

I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.

We’ll all be equal under the grass, and God’s got a heaven for country trash.

You’ve got to know your limitations. I don’t know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.

I’m not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I’m thrilled to death with life.

There’s a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there’s a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.