Top 100 Johnny Cash Quotes
#1. The battle against the dark one and the clinging to the right one is what my life is about.
Johnny Cash
#2. A rose looks grey at midnight, but the flame is just asleep. And steel is strong because it knows the hammer and white heat.
Johnny Cash
#3. He drank his first strong liquor then to calm his shaking hand, and tried to tell himself at last he had become a man.
Johnny Cash
#4. There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.
Johnny Cash
#5. Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.
Johnny Cash
#6. There's a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there's a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at.
Johnny Cash
#7. So we raise her up every morning, we take her down every night, we don't let her touch the ground and we fold her up right. On second thought, I do like to brag 'cause I'm mighty proud of the Ragged Old Flag.
Johnny Cash
#9. You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.
Johnny Cash
#10. What have I become, my sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away, in the end.
Johnny Cash
#11. The only really frightening thing about Cinnamon Hill belongs in the realm of the living and serves to remind me that some of them-just a few of them, a tiny minority-are much more dangerous than all the dead put together.
Johnny Cash
#12. 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.
Johnny Cash
#13. It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks
Johnny Cash
#14. I came to believe in a power much higher than I
Johnny Cash
#15. Until things are brighter.. I'm the man in black.
Johnny Cash
#16. God's the final judge for Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash too. That's solely in the hands of God.
Johnny Cash
#17. Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.
Johnny Cash
#18. It's good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people
Johnny Cash
#19. You're so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good.
Johnny Cash
#20. I don't have Paul's calling - I'm not out there being all things to all men to win them for Christ - but sometimes I can be a signpost. Sometimes I can sow a seed. And post-hole diggers and seed sowers are mighty important in the building of the Kingdom.
Johnny Cash
#21. However, neither he nor anyone else could have become the star Elvis was. Ain't nobody like Elvis. Never was.
Johnny Cash
#22. 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.
Johnny Cash
#23. 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.
Johnny Cash
#24. When God forgave me, I figured I'd better do it too.
Johnny Cash
#25. You miss a lot of opportunities by making mistakes, but that's part of it: knowing that you're not shut out forever, and that there's a goal you still can reach.
Johnny Cash
#26. He was removed from jail and placed in a place for the insensitive and insane.
Johnny Cash
#27. Everything I have and everything I do is now given completely to Jesus Christ.
Johnny Cash
#28. I'm not really concerned about boundaries. I just follow my conscience and my heart. Follow your heart. That's what I do. Compassion is something I have a lot of, because I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Anybody who has suffered a lot of pain has a lot of compassion.
Johnny Cash
#29. 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
Johnny Cash
#30. He went up to heaven, located his dog. Not only that, but he rejoined his arm.
Johnny Cash
#31. When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.
Johnny Cash
#32. Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you.
Johnny Cash
#33. I admit I'm a fool for you, because your mine, I walk the line.
Johnny Cash
#34. Of travel I've had my share, man, I've been everywhere.
Johnny Cash
#35. 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.
Johnny Cash
#36. 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.
Johnny Cash
#37. And I'd be dead , but by God's grace
Drive on, don't mean nothin'
My children love me, but they don't understand
And I got a woman who knows her man
Drive on, don't mean nothin', drive on
Johnny Cash
#38. I took the easy way, and to an extent I regret that. Still, though, the way we did it was honest. We played it and sang it the way we felt it, and there's a lot to be said for that.
Johnny Cash
#39. The gospel of Christ must always be an open door with a welcome sign for all.
Johnny Cash
#40. 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.
Johnny Cash
#41. I've been flushed from the bathroom of your heart.
Johnny Cash
#43. 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.
Johnny Cash
#44. I like to sit on the front porch of an old cabin I built in the woods and just listen to the birds; I like to fish in the pond and I always throw the fish back.
Johnny Cash
#45. San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell. May your walls fall and may I live to tell.
Johnny Cash
#46. 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.
Johnny Cash
#47. Love is a burning thing and it makes a firey ring.
Johnny Cash
#48. Being rich means you get to worry about everything except money.
Johnny Cash
#49. My arms are too short to box with God.
Johnny Cash
#50. 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?
Johnny Cash
#51. No matter how much you've sinned, no matter how much you've stumbled, no matter how much you fall, no matter how far you've got from God, don't give up. You can still be redeemed. As someone says, keep the faith.
Johnny Cash
#52. 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.
Johnny Cash
#53. Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.
Johnny Cash
#54. I could wrap myself in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere.
Johnny Cash
#55. 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.
Johnny Cash
#56. We'll all be equal under the grass, and God's got a heaven for country trash.
Johnny Cash
#57. My daddy left home when I was three and he didn't leave much to Ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
Johnny Cash
#58. 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.
Johnny Cash
#59. After about three lessons [my] voice teacher said, "Don't take voice lessons. Do it your way. You're a song stylist. Always do it your way."
Johnny Cash
#60. I wear black because I'm comfortable in it. But then in the summertime when it's hot I'm comfortable in light blue.
Johnny Cash
#61. God Ain't no stained glass window, cause he never keeps his window closed.
Johnny Cash
#62. Convicts are the best audience I ever played for.
Johnny Cash
#63. We're all in this together if we're in it at all.
Johnny Cash
#64. I'm so uncomfortable wearing colors in public. I really am. Even denim. If I've got a day off in a town, I want to go out for a walk I'll put on denim. But almost everything I've got the black on.
Johnny Cash
#65. If you have political convictions ... keep 'em to yourself
Johnny Cash
#66. 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.
Johnny Cash
#67. I expect my life to end pretty soon. You know, I'm 71 years old. I have great faith, though. I have unshakable faith.
Johnny Cash
#68. Take one fresh and tender kiss
Add one stolen night of bliss
One girl, one boy, some grief,
some joy Memories are made of this.
Johnny Cash
#70. It's all fleeting. As fame is fleeting, so are all the trappings of fame fleeting. The money, the clothes, the furniture.
Johnny Cash
#71. I am not a Christian artist, I am an artist who is a Christian.
Johnny Cash
#72. I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life.
Johnny Cash
#73. 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.
Johnny Cash
#74. 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.
Johnny Cash
#75. 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.
Johnny Cash
#76. I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
Johnny Cash
#77. A person knows when it just seems to feel right to them. Listen to your heart.
Johnny Cash
#78. Prisoners are the greatest audience that an entertainer can perform to.
Johnny Cash
#79. You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.
Johnny Cash
#80. Sam Phillips always encouraged me to do it my way, to use whatever other influences I wanted, but never to copy ... if there hadn't been a Sam Phillips, I might still be working in a cotton field.
Johnny Cash
#82. 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
Johnny Cash
#83. 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.
Johnny Cash
#84. I don't give up because I don't give up. I don't believe in it.
Johnny Cash
#85. You know, the man's best friend is his dog ... if he's got nothing else.
Johnny Cash
#86. I've never been accused of a felony. I never spent time behind bars except for a few overnight jail times back in the Sixties. [But] I think there's a little bit of a criminal in all of us. Everybody's done something they don't want anybody to know about.
Johnny Cash
#87. Beneath the stains of time the feeling disappears, you are someone else I am still right here.
Johnny Cash
#88. God gives us life and takes us away as He sees fit.
Johnny Cash
#89. 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.
Johnny Cash
#90. I read novels but I also read the Bible. And study it, you know? And the more I learn, the more excited I get.
Johnny Cash
#91. When people ask me who my favorite country singer is, I say, 'You mean besides George Jones?'
Johnny Cash
#92. Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free.
Johnny Cash
#93. 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.
Johnny Cash
#94. 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.
Johnny Cash
#95. 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.
Johnny Cash
#96. I'm very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.
Johnny Cash
#97. 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.
Johnny Cash
#98. It takes a real man to live for God-a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.
Johnny Cash
#99. 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.
Johnny Cash
#100. 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.
Johnny Cash
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