This may be a dream, but I’ll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.
I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they’re not alone.
To be young, gifted and black!
Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.
I’m a real rebel with a cause.
I’m sorry that I did not become the world’s first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.
Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I’m lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.
I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.
That is why we fly from the inner void, since God might steal into it. It is not the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion for effort which causes sin, but fear of God. We know that we cannot see him face to face without dying, and we do not want to die.
Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I’m singing her music or not.
Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
There’s no excuse for the young...
Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.
I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I’ve dreamed.
I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I’ve done my whole life, without thought.
How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?
The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.
Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
I applied for a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I knew I was good enough, but they turned me down. And it took me about six months to realize it was because I was black. I never really got over that jolt of racism at the time.
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.