91 Inspiring Quotes by Johnny Cash

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.

I was wearing black clothes almost from the beginning. I feel comfortable in black. I felt like black looked good onstage, that it was attractive, so I started wearing it all the time.

My father was a man of love. He always loved me to death. He worked hard in the fields, but my father never hit me. Never. I don't ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father.

You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.

I read novels but I also read the Bible. And study it, you know? And the more I learn, the more excited I get.

I am not a Christian artist, I am an artist who is a Christian.

I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.

That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.

It's like a novelist writing far out things. If it makes a point and makes sense, then people like to read that. But if it's off in left field and goes over the edge, you lose it. The same with musical talent, I think.

People call me wild. Not really though, I'm not. I guess I've never been normal, not what you call Establishment. I'm country.

God gives us life and takes us away as He sees fit.

I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.

When I record somebody else's song, I have to make it my own or it doesn't feel right. I'll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn't know it!

I love to go to the studio and stay there 10 or 12 hours a day. I love it. What is it? I don't know. It's life.

I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real.

Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you.

I wear my crown of thorns on my liars chair, full of broken thoughts I cannot repair, beneath the stain of time the feelings disappears. What have I become, my sweetest of friends?

A rose looks grey at midnight, but the flame is just asleep. And steel is strong because it knows the hammer and white heat.

I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, But is there because he's a victim of the times. I wear the black for those who never read.

Life is rough so you gotta be tough.

What have I become, my sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away, in the end.

We're all in this together if we're in it at all.

I don't give up because I don't give up. I don't believe in it.

All music comes from God.

I love the freedoms we got in this country, I appreciate your freedom to burn your flag if you want to, but I really appreciate my right to bear arms so I can shoot you if you try to burn mine.

I don't like it, but I guess things happen that way.

I have tried drugs and a little of everything else, and there is nothing in the world more soul-satisfying than having the kingdom of God building inside you and growing.

I came to believe in a power much higher than I.

Life is the question and life is the answer, and God is the reason and love is the way.

When you sing, you pray twice.

Don't take voice lessons. Do it your way.

I wear black for those who never read or listen to the words that Jesus said, about the road to happiness, through love and charity.

Those that have lived longer than us always have something to teach us, that we can take with us for the rest of our lives.

Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free.

I've been flushed from the bathroom of your heart.

If you're going to be a Christian, you're going to change. You're going to lose some old friends, not because you want to, but because you need to.

Oh, I'd love to wear a rainbow everyday,
And tell the world that everything's okay,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
Till things are brighter, I'm the Man in Black.

I expect my life to end pretty soon. You know, I'm 71 years old. I have great faith, though. I have unshakable faith.

Sam Phillips wanted I Walk The Line up -- you know, up-tempo. And I put paper in the strings of my guitar to get that (vocalizing) sound, and with the bass and the lead guitar, there it was. Bare and stark, that song was when it was released. And I heard it on the radio and I really didn't like it, and I called Sam Phillips and asked him please not to send out any more records of that song.

Deep in the heart of the infinite darkness, a tiny blue marble is spinning through space. Born in the splendor of God's holy vision, and sliding away like a tear down his face.

When I was a baby, my mama told me son, always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns. But I shot a man in Reno.

Beneath the stains of time the feeling disappears, you are someone else I am still right here.

One day, I just decided I'm ready to go. So I went down with my guitar and sat on the front steps of Sam Phillips recording studio.

Rick Rubin came to my concert in Orange County, Calif. I believe this was, like, '83 when he first came and listened to the show. And then afterwards, I went in the dressing room and sat and talked to him.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.

The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don't go out there and sing them anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout.

Call him drunken Ira Hayes, he won't answer any more. Not the whiskey drinking Indian, nor the Marine that went to war.

My father was a cotton farmer first and -- but he didn't have any land or what land he had, he lost it in the Depression. So he worked as a woodman and cut pulpwood for the paper mills, rode the rails in boxcars going from one harvest to another to try to make a little money picking fruit or vegetables.

San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell. May your walls fall and may I live to tell.

Why me, Lord? What have I ever done to deserve even one of the blessings I've known? Why me, Lord? What did I ever do that was worth love from you and the kindness you've shown? Lord, help me, Jesus, I've wasted it so. Help me, Jesus. I know what I am. Now that I know that I've needed you so, help me, Jesus. My soul's in your hand.

I had a song called "Folsom Prison Blues" that was a hit just before "I Walk The Line." And the people in Texas heard about it at the state prison and got to writing me letters asking me to come down there. So I responded and then the warden called me and asked if I would come down and do a show for the prisoners in Texas.

Could it be the girls and boys are trying to be heard above your noise?

It just took the right time. I was fully confident that I was going to see Sam Phillips and to record for him that when I called him, I thought, I'm going to get on Sun Records. So I called him and he turned me down flat. Then two weeks later, I got turned down again. He told me over the phone that he couldn't sell gospel music so -- as it was independent, not a lot of money.

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine I keep my eyes wide open all the time I keep the ends out for the tie that binds Because you're mine, I walk the line.

I recently found myself going through a period of uncertainty about my future as a performer, my status as a personality, the believability of my Christian witness and the knowledge of God's will in my life. I felt a force bigger than myself saying, 'Lay back. Take it easy. Study hard. Read your bible. Think, write and keep your mouth shut for awhile.'

I always loved those songs. And with my high tenor, I thought I was pretty good -- you know? -- almost as good as Dennis Day.

He drank his first strong liquor then to calm his shaking hand, and tried to tell himself at last he had become a man.

If you aren't gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.

I would take songs that I'd loved as a child and redo them in my mind for the new voice I had, the low voice.

There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I'm the biggest sinner of them all.

Because you're mine, I walk the line.

Six foot six he stood on the ground
He weighed two hundred and thirty-five pounds
But I saw that giant of a man brought down
To his knees by love.

When I finally stopped singing, he had been saying, like, the last day or so, he'd been saying, now, I think we should put this one in the album. So without him saying I want to record you and release an album, he kept -- he started saying, let's put this one in the album. So the album, this big question, you know, began to take form, take shape. And Rick Rubin and I would weed out the songs.

So I simply don't buy the concept of "Generation X" as the "lost generation." I see too many good kids out there, kids who are ready and willing to do the right thing, just as Jack was. Their distractions are greater, though. There's no more simple life with simple choices for the young.

Rick Rubin had his hair -- I don't think it's ever been cut and very -- dresses like a hobo, usually -- clean but . Was the kind of guy I really felt comfortable with, actually. I think I was more comfortable with him than I would have been with a producer with a suit on.

Help me, Jesus. I know what I am.

Some gal would giggle and I'd get red, and some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head. I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

Everybody was wearing rhinestones, all those sparkly clothes, and cowboy boots. I decided to wear a black shirt and pants and see if I could get by with it. I did and I've worn black clothes ever since.

I think in my world of religion, you're called to preach or you don't preach. Called by God to preach. I never been ordained by God to preach the gospel. I have a calling, it's called to perform and sing.

Well, I take great comfort in the words of the apostle Paul who said, ‘What I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do.' And he said, ‘It is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me. But who,' he asks, ‘will deliver me from this body of death?' And he answers for himself and for me, ‘Through Jesus Christ the Lord.'

Gospel music is so ingrained into my bones. I can't do a concert without singing a gospel song. It's what I was raised on.

I sang those old gospel songs for my mother, and she said, is that you? And I said, yes, ma'am. And she came over and put her arms around me and said, God's got his hands on you.

I love Bob Dylan, I really do. I love his early work, I love the first time he plugged in electrically, I love his Christian albums, I love his other albums.

My mother told me to keep on singing, and that kept me working through the cotton fields. She said God has his hand on you. You'll be singing for the world someday.

Convicts are the best audience I ever played for.

The hardest thing for me in Vietnam wasn't seeing the wounded and dead. It was watching the big transport jets come in, bringing loads of fresh new boys for the war.

There's a man going 'round taking names And he decides who to free and who to blame Everybody won't be treated all the same There'll be a golden ladder reaching down When the Man comes around.

If I'm anything, I'm not a singer but I'm a song stylist.

When God forgave me, I figured I'd better do it too.

The beer and the wurst were wonderful, but I was dying to be back in the South, where the livin' was easy, where the fish were jumpin', where the cotton grew high.

Being rich means you get to worry about everything except money.

They're powerful, those songs. At times they've been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.

The battle against the dark one, and the clinging to the right one, is what my life is about.

When I think about country music, I think about America.

I'm thankful for a pair of shoes that feel really good on my feet; I like my shoes.
I'm thankful for the birds; I feel like they're singing just for me when I get up in the morning... Saying, 'Good morning, John. You made it, John.'
I'm thankful for the sea breeze that feels so good right now, and the scent of jasmine when the sun starts going down.
I'm thankful.

Will you tell me somethin' Mr Lumberjack is it one for forward and three for back.