Johnny Cash famous quotes

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

#Life #Bullying #Mistake

Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.
-- Johnny Cash

#Nice #Fighting #Two

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

#Country #People #Normal

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

#Country #Appreciate #Trying

Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.
-- Johnny Cash

#Money #Worry #World

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

#Twelve #Way #Found

I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.
-- Johnny Cash

#Mean #Ideas #People

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

#Strong #Sadness #Flames

it's good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people
-- Johnny Cash

#Hate #People #Hate You

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

#Song #Sight #Rock N Roll

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

#Say Anything #Might #Wells

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

#Men #Names #Ladders

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.
-- Johnny Cash

#Dream #Growing Up #Air

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

#Drug #Soul #Kingdoms

How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.
-- Johnny Cash

#Men #Heaven #Hell

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.
-- Johnny Cash

#Spiritual #Real #Sides

All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate…I choose love.
-- Johnny Cash

#Hate #Choices #Love Or Hate

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.
-- Johnny Cash

#Writing #Thinking #People

The ones that you're calling wild are going to be the leaders in a little while.
-- Johnny Cash

#Leader #Calling #Politics

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

#Dad #Father #Men

Of emotions, of love, of breakup, of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does.
-- Johnny Cash

#Moving On #Break Up #Breakup

God's the final judge for Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash too. That's solely in the hands of God.
-- Johnny Cash

#Hands #Judging #Finals

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

#Giving #Fit

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

#Study #Excited #Novel

The Master of Lifes been good to me. He has given me strength to face past illnesses, and victory in the face of defeat. He has given me life and joy where other saw oblivion. He Has given new purpose to live for, new services to render and old wounds to heal. Life and love go on, let the music play.
-- Johnny Cash

#Life And Love #Past #Play

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

#Caught

Convicts are the best audience I ever played for.
-- Johnny Cash

#Audience

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

#Ends #Sweetest

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

#Song #Thinking #Singing

The beast in me Is caged by frail and fragile bars.
-- Johnny Cash

#Bars #Beast #Frail

My arms are too short to box with God.
-- Johnny Cash

#Inspirational #Life #Arms

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

#Death #Grief #Loss

I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.
-- Johnny Cash

#Inspirational #Way #Found

Everything I have and everything I do is now given completely to Jesus Christ.
-- Johnny Cash

#Jesus #Jesus Christ #Christ

I'm thrilled to death with life.
-- Johnny Cash

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.'
-- Johnny Cash

#Jesus #Hate #Practice

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

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.
-- Johnny Cash

#Baby #Son #Gun

As sure as God made black and white, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light.
-- Johnny Cash

#Dark #Black And White #Light

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

#Family #Home #Guitar

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

#Reading #Writing #Shy

We'll all be equal under the grass, and God's got a heaven for country trash.
-- Johnny Cash

#Death #Country #Heaven

All music comes from God.
-- Johnny Cash

#Music

For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide.
-- Johnny Cash

#Trying #Tides #Turns

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

#Men #Watches #Shots

I am not a Christian artist, I am an artist who is a Christian.
-- Johnny Cash

#Christian #Artist

I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life.
-- Johnny Cash

#Bitter #Should

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

#Liars #Sadness #Broken

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

#Mother #Art #Hands

I came to believe in a power much higher than I
-- Johnny Cash

#Believe #Higher

You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.
-- Johnny Cash

#Truth

When I'm gone I'll be remembered as the workin' man who put his point across with a right hand full of knuckles.
-- Johnny Cash

#Work #Men #Hands

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.
-- Johnny Cash

#Boys #Laughing #Guy

I remember everything What have I become? My sweetest friend? E veryone I know goes away in the end You could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt.
-- Johnny Cash

#Hurt #Pain #Empires

I'm thankful for the sea breeze that feels so good right now, and the scent of jasmine when the sun starts going down.
-- Johnny Cash

#Appreciation #Sea #Scent

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

#Girl #Boys #Trying

Understand your man, meditate on it.
-- Johnny Cash

#Men #Advice

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

#Wall #Order #Law

He was removed from jail and placed in a place for the insensitive and insane.
-- Johnny Cash

#Order #Law #Jail

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

#Heart #Rejection #Bathroom

I admit I'm a fool for you, because your mine, I walk the line.
-- Johnny Cash

#Low Self Esteem #Lines #Fool

God Ain't no stained glass window, cause he never keeps his window closed.
-- Johnny Cash

#Religious #Glasses #Religion

Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you.
-- Johnny Cash

#Inspirational #Loneliness #Emptiness

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

#Strong #Men #Hands

Come on boys, you must listen unto me, lay off the whiskey and let that cocaine be.
-- Johnny Cash

#Boys #Alcohol #Drug

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

#War #Drinking #Marine

He went up to heaven, located his dog. Not only that, but he rejoined his arm.
-- Johnny Cash

#Death #Dog #Heaven

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

#Religious #Jesus #Black

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

#Religious #Love Is #Religion

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

#Song #Teacher #Voice

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

#Wall #Fall #Order

My way of communicating with God as a boy (and often even now) was through the lyrics of a song. . . . So I didn't have the problem some people do who say, "I don't know how to pray." I used the songs to communicate with God. . . . To me, songs were the telephone to heaven, and I tied up the line quite a bit.
-- Johnny Cash

#Song #Prayer #Boys