Time is important to me because I want to sing long enough to leave a message. I'm used to singing in churches where nobody would dare stop me until the Lord arrives!

The Lord doesn't like us to be dead. Be alive. Sometimes I dance to the glory of the Lord, because He said so.

I don't worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.

This is the place to see the stars - Hollywood Bowl.

Put your mind on the gospel. And remember - there's one God for all.

Everybody needs somebody.

Without a song, each day would be a century.

When you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on.

I'll come to any benefit if I see SCLC get all the money.

When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong.

They thought I was a success as soon as I started paying the bills.

Anybody that sings the blues is in a deep pit, yelling for help.

I close my eyes when I sing so I can feel the song better.

Sometimes you ask God for something and you don't know what you're asking.

My hands, my feet, I throw my whole body to say all that is within me.

Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.

Baby, black promoters oppressed me before white promoters ever got hold of me. Don't talk skin to me.

Money just draws flies.

Time is important to me because I want to sing long enough to leave a message. I'm used to singing in churches where nobody would dare stop me until the Lord arrives!

God can make you anything you want to be, but you have to put everything in his hands.

The old Devil gets mad when you're trying to do good. Pray that God will move the stumbling blocks.

How can you sing of amazing grace and all God's wonders without using your hands?

I hope to bring people to God with my songs.

Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals?

If you want me to sing this Christmas song with the feeling and the meaning, you better see if you can locate that check.

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say.

It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.

One thing about playing the real jazz is that you can't count it.

The trouble with records is that they're too short.

You're blessed if you have the strength to work.

The mind and the voice by themselves are not sufficient.

Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.

Faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul; man cannot live in health without them.

If you believe in God, He will open the windows of heaven and pour blessings upon you.

When you are through with the blues youve got nothing to rest on.

Blues are the songs of despair but gospel songs are the songs of hope.

Its easy to be independent when youve got money. But to be independent when you havent got a thing thats the Lords test.

It's easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing—that's the Lord's test.

Yet through history gays have always dominated religious life and churches.

The more I do bookstores, the more people come up to me from church groups. I spoke at Pittsburg State College and had 2 or 3 ministers and book groups from a couple of churches.

Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

All churches and all religions contain aspects of the truth, but only God is truth.

You can count on one hand the number of Novus Ordo churches in this country that feature a fully Catholic music program of any quality, consistent with the Roman rite tradition.

The result has been that although few conservative Presbyterian churches actually worship in the Puritan way, the Puritan theology of worship remains the standard orthodoxy among them. This discrepancy sometimes leads to guilty consciences.

Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life.

If real churches exist, such persons are not called on to make them.

Marriage is the mother of the world. It preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.

They cannot make it say what they want it to say. And this is the beginning and the end of the case for retaining the old language: If the churches give it up, who will remember how to say what is said?