Sonny Terry's Quotes

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

If you've got a good vibrato, you can get away with a lot.

It's very easy to learn. And very difficult to master.

So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.

See how these Christians love one another.

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.

The first reaction to truth is hatred.

You cannot parcel out freedom in pieces because freedom is all or nothing.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

The entire fruit is already present in the seed.

Nature soaks every evil with either fear or shame.

He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies.

Hope is patience with the lamp lit.

The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain. Therefore they will suffer if you take away their pleasure by not feeling pain.

Prevention of birth is a precipitation of murder.

The more you mow us down, the more numerous we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.

Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not.

Arguments about Scripture achieve nothing but a stomachache and a headache.

Fear is the foundation of safety.

Nothing that is God's is obtainable by money.

The nature of rumor is known to all.

The usual complaint is, 'I have no other way of earning a living.' The harsh reply can be, 'Do you have to live?'