I don't need to make a fortune, I need to survive.

I didn't need to depend on the record company to publish my records.

Apollo Records signed me for my gospel ability.

I'm still amazed people remembered and didn't give up on me.

The secret was to just be cool, stay in God's graces, and work it out.

I walked out of the Chinese restaurant with a fat check, a record deal, and a box of shrimp egg foo yung!

The deals that were made for Black artists at that time were not the deals that were made for white artists.

I don't need to make a fortune, I need to survive.

Leonard Chess passed, and that was the end of the Chess label for that time.

I didn't do the marching down the streets, jumping in front of the lines and holding hands... that wasn't me.

I want to be a soul singer.

I was signed to MGM. I was in Vegas for sixteen weeks at the Sands Hotel.

That was my choice at that time, and I still say Nixon was a great president. A very beautiful and wise man.

As you grow older, you learn to understand life a little better.

You gotta do it with class and integrity. If not, you're gonna drag yourself through the mud.

But we didn't have the financial structure, like the right attorneys, the right managers, the right accountants, and we were going against the grain of what black entertainers is supposed to do.

We were using the record as a tool to invest money into real estate all through the South, because we were living in an era where the South was changing.

We had some problems - my children were kidnapped during that time, and it just changed my whole way of thinking, from being in show business and everything else.

If we could buy these properties and then invest in the Black community, with our own McDonald's, with our own Kentucky Fried Chickens, it was gonna be a great move.

I didn't need to borrow money from the record company, because if I had my own publishing company, and I had my own writers, I'd have enough to get and do whatever I wanted to do.

I should have my own publishing companies.

We were grooving, at that point, in the same direction, but remember, Roy Hamilton and myself were going into a path and a direction that had no programming.

My manager was Buddy Glee, who put me together with Mike Curb, and was basically the idea to bring some soul to the label and bring something different to the label besides the Hank Williams situation.

Sometimes its controversy, but we all have our choices that we make.

As you grow older you learn to understand life a little better.

Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

Industry is fortune's right hand, and frugality its left.

When you work for Bruckheimer, you don't get it any better. He's the ultimate producer. I've had the good fortune of working with some great producers over the years.

I've seen so many people in this business that made a fortune. They get old and broke and can't make any money. I tell you something... no one's going to play a benefit for Jimmy Dean.

Disney made a fortune out of inventing the businessman's idea of the imaginary as the contradictory of the businessman's idea of the real.

I have had friends who have acted kindly towards me, and it has been my good fortune to have it in my power to give them substantial proofs of my gratitude.

It was never the fame or fortune that drove me to act. It was something I love and enjoy doing it. A lot of people identify who they are by what they do and that's not me. It's what I do but not who I am. Who I am is a parent. I'm a family man.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

The more we take the less we become, the fortune of one man means less for some.

When Fortune smiles, I smile to think how quickly she will frown.

Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.

It will be thought that I am acting strangely in concerning myself at this day with what appears at first sight and simply a well-known method of fortune-telling.

I had the great good fortune to interview Peggy Lee. Her memories of working with Walt Disney and his team were warm and upbeat.

If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it's the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past.

Fortune raises up and fortune brings low both the man who fares well and the one who fares badly; and there is no prophet of the future for mortal men.

But I, Caesar, have not sought to amass wealth by the practice of my art, having been rather contented with a small fortune and reputation, than desirous of abundance accompanied by a want of reputation.

Anyway, in the mid 80's I was spending a fortune buying old Golden Age books from the late 30's and 40's and I was making personal appearances at a lot of sci fi and comic book conventions all around the country here so that I could find books for my collection.

I believe in America. America's made my fortune.

Fortune and love favor the brave.

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

A man's best fortune, or his worst, is his wife.