Little Richard quotes:

I think God made a woman to be strong and not to be trampled under the feet of men. I've always felt this way because my mother was a very strong woman, without a husband.

I came from a family where my people didn't like rhythm and blues. Bing Crosby - "Pennies from Heaven" - Ella Fitzgerald, was all I heard.

It was a way out of poverty. It was a way to success. It was a way to education. And it was a way to a brighter day for me.

Gay people are the sweetest, kindest, most artistic, warmest and most thoughtful people in the world. And since the beginning of time all they've ever been is kicked.

Plus I love Tanya Tucker and I love country music.

Elvis may be the King of Rock and Roll, but I am the Queen.

Black people lived right by the railroad tracks, and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy, and I thought: I'm gonna make a song that sounds like that.

I look back on my life, comin' out of Macon, Georgia - I never thought I'd be a superstar, a living legend. I never heard of no rock and roll in my life.

Rock 'n' roll offered me a platform to speak what I felt. It also offered me a platform to support my mama and my brothers and sisters - twelve children.

When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues.

I love God, and I'm a follower.

And I'd like to give my love to everybody, and let them know that the grass may look greener on the other side, but believe me, it's just as hard to cut.

I try to be a guide for people, to make their darkness bright and to make the pathway light, and never to condemn or control or criticize.

I never accepted the idea that I had to be guided by some pattern or blueprint.

I was washing dishes at the Greyhound bus station at the time and I said, 'Awap bop a lup bop a wop bam boom, take 'em out!'

I think people who don't believe in God are crazy. How can you say there is no God when you hear the birds singing these beautiful songs you didn't make?

I also think that what's wrong with all of us is that we don't show enough love toward each other.

Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.

God gives us the ability, but rock 'n' roll was created by men.

They shoulda called me Little Cocaine, I was sniffing so much of the stuff! My nose got big enough to back a diesel truck in, unload it, and drive it right out again.

I don't think a woman has to act like a man to show that she has strength.

I think they saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out. My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn't.

I've never gotten money from most of those records. And I made those records: In the studio, they'd just give me a bunch of words, I'd make up a song! The rhythm and everything. 'Good Golly Miss Molly'! And I didn't get a dime for it.

Greed has taken the whole universe, and nobody is worried about their soul.

I don't give the devil credit for creating nothing.

And I think a woman should find it a joy to be female because God made both male and female.

I also like the banging piano - that old good-time piano.

I was really kind of shy as a child. But I would do things for attention.

I tried to look presentable for a show, but not for sexual attraction. It was strictly for show business.

I've never seen the devil create music.

If at first you don't succeed, you get back up and you try ... and you try ... and you try it again ... except ice skating, I hate this crap, I quit!

But I was singing loud, and most singers weren't singing loud.

Elvis was God-given, there's no other explanation. A Messiah comes around every few thousand years, and Elvis was it this time.

I think my legacy should be that when I started in show business, there wasn't no such thing as rock n' roll. When I started with 'Tutti Frutti,' that's when rock really started rocking.

It's not the size of the ship; it's the size of the waves.

People called rock & roll 'African music.' They called it 'voodoo music.' They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan - the same thing that they always used to say about hip-hop.

I invented rock & roll. Jimi Hendrix was my guitar player. James Brown was my vocalist.

God is omnipotent, He is omniscient, and He is ever present.

A lot of people call me the architect of rock & roll. I don't call myself that, but I believe it's true.

But men are so full of greed today, they'll sell anything for a little piece of money.

I'm a conductor of revivals. The only minister in the whole package. Little Richard, the evangelist.

But I'm a rock 'n' roll singer; that's my livelihood, my occupation.

I would wear flamboyant clothes and long hair, and most singers at the time didn't.

My mother died, and I couldn't stand to look at her bedroom any more. I'd get sick. I've always been a momma's boy.

I don't think that you have to be effeminate to be sensitive.

But when I went on the stage to do a show, I would put on makeup because I felt that it enhanced my act; it drew attention to what I was doing.

I always knew I was a man, always felt that I was a man, always wanted to be a man.

I thank God for making me a man.

I think that a man should be caring.

If I had my life to live over, I would want to be a man.

I never heard nobody in my audience call me any kind of names.

And I don't get down on nobody else for doing whatever else they do. To each his own.

A lot of songs I sang to crowds to get their reaction. That's how I knew they'd hit.

A-bop-bop-a-loom-op-a-lop-bop-boom.

God would be a very selfish god if he gave all the soul to one race. ... When one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.

I am the architect of rock n' roll. I have to be a fan of all its forms.

I am the innovator. I am the originator. I am the emancipator. I am the architect of rock 'n' roll!

I decided to come back and teach goodness in this business. To teach love, because music is the universal language. We are God's bouquet, and through music we become one.

I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs.

I gave up rock 'n' roll for the rock of ages! I used to be a glaring homosexual until God changed me!

I got a girl named Bony Maronie, she's as skinny as a stick of macaroni.

I got fame and fortune, and I lost my sense of reasoning.

I just want the world to know that God is present, that he's alive for ever more.

I let people know that it was all right to do the kinds of things I did.

I only wore makeup when I went onstage.

I saw Uncle John with Long Tall Sally, he saw Aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley.

I was directed and commanded by another power. The power of darkness ... that a lot of people don't believe exists. The power of the Devil. Satan.

I'm very much a gentleman in what I do.

It's hard to have a friend when your name's a household word.

Like, my mother would have company over, and I would sing so they'd pay attention to me.

My true belief about Rock 'n' Roll--and there have been a lot of phrases attributed to me over the years--is this: I believe this kind of music is demonic. ... A lot of the beats in music today are taken from voodoo, from the voodoo drums. If you study music in rhythms, like I have, you'll see that is true. I believe that kind of music is driving people from Christ. It is contagious

No, I've never truly been a minister.

Rock 'n' roll doesn't glorify God. You can't drink out of God's cup and the devil's cup at the same time. I was one of the pioneers of that music, one of the builders. I know what the blocks are made of because I built them.

That's what Tina Turner did, too - sang blues up-tempo - and they called it rock 'n' roll.

To me, true rock 'n' roll has a lot of bottom in it.

We're gonna have some fun tonight.

I thank God for Elvis Presley. I thank the Lord for sending Elvis to open the door so I could walk down the road....