American Quotes

I don't have a Twitter account. I don't go to fan club gatherings. I'm not one of those actors who spends a lot of time engaging with the audience.

Education in this country is about how to maintain the status quo and to perpetuate racism.

About 10,000 years ago, males and females were acting equitably and were treating one another as equals, and then males took over the power, because they have physical power and physical strength.

We don't need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables - the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers - to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.

Age is how we determine how valuable you are.

When you're famous, you don't get to meet people because they want you to like them when the present themselves to you, and you don't see the real people.

They're paying me an outrageous sum of money; $40,000 a week, which is totally silly.

There's so much talk about the drug generation and songs about drugs. That's stupid. They aren't songs about drugs; they're about life.

My role in the Mamas and Papas was basically just to sing.

If you really think you're right, you should tell it.

I've always been so apathetic. I figured, OK, maybe the world is going to fall down around me. Now I want to make a better world... that's motherhood.

I was just a bumpkin. Just a country bumpkin. I had just come to New York from Virginia. Or was it Baltimore?

How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.

Honesty is all you need.

If you truly dig what you are doing, if you lay it out that way, nobody can not respond. That's what rock and roll is; it's relentless.

People do not retire. They are retired by others.

Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.

It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.

A man is a god in ruins.

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.

A problem is your chance to do your best.

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.

There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter.

You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it.