I think we musicians are emissaries. Every time we go before the public, we're there to make converts.

Who ever walked behind anyone to freedom? If we can't go hand in hand, I don't want to go.

I have always respected everyone's religion. As I say, there is only one God and a lot of confused people.

I've always known I was gifted, which is not the easiest thing in the world for a person to know, because you're not responsible for your gift, only for what you do with it.

Any woman who has a great deal to offer the world is in trouble. And if she's a black woman, seh's in deep trouble.

There's only one free person in this society, and he is white and male.

If you reach for something and find out it's the wrong thing, you change your program and move on.

There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they're born, and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then.

There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they were born and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then.

Who ever walked behind anyone to freedom?

The trick to taking the paper off the crayons...is to just do it. There is no trick.

Love not only transform your mental and emotional character/attitude, it also shifts your physical being, which goes thru subtle changes also. Love is POWERFUL! God is love.

I feel very open with people, and I'm good at disarming them and having conversations.

Death is the only sovereign whom no partiality can warp, and no price corrupt.

I'm looking back to a period of my life when I was badly hurt and then looking at another time when I felt I had things going for me again, so I suppose there is a theme [of the Faith album].

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.

To be part of the creation, I must act humbly. I'll take that over a goddess any day!

Gary Cooper was a good friend. He was a great nature lover. He was like an American Indian, he knew every leaf that was turned over. It was an education to go for a walk with him.

Your promise means more than the words you use to give it.

When you leave the familiar and enter the unknown, your fear becomes refined by experience and hammered into tools of survival on the anvil of anxiety.