Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.

Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.

Singing as a full-time job was not something I had given a lot of thought to and I had no clear notion of the money to be made in it.

It isn't reasonable to expect that everyone in the world is a country music fan. Not yet, anyway.

What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.

I don't care what the religion is called; as far as I'm concerned, one God, the God I adhere to, is in charge of all of them.

I've tried to help a lot of young artists get started.

Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously.

Fans will praise you, scold you, and offer helpful advice. Fans will also defend you.

When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out.

Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.

The tastes of country music fans are not limited to the narrow range defined by consultants and programmers and record company moguls.

I learned to tune a guitar by ear. That method has served me pretty well.

A black man singing about a blond girl was potential trouble.

A fan will grab you and hug you and will not let go. When that happens, you wish it could be that way all over the world.

Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing.

Even now, when I'm asked how I'm doing, I like to reply, 'Pretty good. I've got all my fingers and both eyes.

Too many religious organizations are in the business of enforcing beliefs.

There are worse things than being thought a Republican.

It used to be that if you had a pretty good record, you could stop by a station in Little Rock or Atlanta and let the DJ listen to it. No way something like that can happen now.

I grew up not liking my father very much. I never saw him cry. But he must have. Everybody cries.

Chet Atkins... is probably the best guitar player who ever lived.

The time I spent thinking about how I was better than somebody else or worrying about somebody else's attitude was time I could put to better use.

I think there's enough room in country music for everybody.

Redd Foxx was the same gruff old codger you saw on television.

What qualifies me to tell people how to act or what to think? I'm Charley Pride, country singer. Period.

There is an intimacy about the Opry Theater that gives an entertainer a special charge.

I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange.

For most entertainers, there is a single experience, one defining moment, when confidence replaces the self-doubt that most of us wrestle with.

Any entertainer who tells you that the adoration of fans is not a heady experience probably never had the experience.

In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley.

No one had ever told me that whites were supposed to sing one kind of music and blacks another - I sang what I liked in the only voice I had.

But like the rest of the country, Maine has reached an impasse, for most of the mercury that fouls our skies, waters and land comes from outside our borders.

Education is the cornerstone of our communities and our country.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

The successful establishment of a buffer zone around Fort Carson will provide an example for other bases around the country as we seek to protect the training mission of the U.S. military while preserving critical habitats on our ranges.

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you're dealt?

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

The day cold and fair with a high easterly wind: we were visited by two Indians who gave us an account of the country and people near the Rocky mountains where they had been.

It was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country, because that was where the racial tension was the greatest.

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

To stop terrorists before the strike, we must do three things: deny them entry into the country, curtail their freedom of action inside the country, and deprive them of material and moral support from within the country.

As I think through the issue of funding the rebuilding of Iraq, I think about the analogy of a bankruptcy proceeding. There is no doubt that Iraq as a country is bankrupt.