Ray Charles Quotes
120 Ray Charles Quotes
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Do it right or don’t do it at all.
Ray Charles
What is soul? It’s like electricity – we don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room.
Ray Charles
I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.
Ray Charles
A jealous man can’t work and a scared man can’t gamble.
Ray Charles
I’m gonna be a great musician.
Ray Charles
I was born with music inside me.
Ray Charles
I have never learned to stop at the skin. If I looked at a man or a woman, I wanted to see inside. Being distracted by shading or coloring is stupid. It gets in the way. It’s something I just can’t see.
Ray Charles
If there’s something I want to do, I’m one of those people that won’t be satisfied until I get it done.
Ray Charles
[On his first mentor Mr Pit] He could have easily said, ‘Hey kid, don’t you see I’m practicing? Get away, don’t bother me.’ But instead he took the time to say, ‘No, you don’t do it that way.’
Ray Charles
Imagine separating kids according to color when we couldn’t even see each other, now ain’t that a bitch!
Ray Charles
As long as I can stand it, God, I’ll keep on keeping on.
Ray Charles
You better live every day like your last because one day you’re going to be right.
Ray Charles
No matter how or why we might be different from anybody else, we should learn to love who we are and be proud of it.
Ray Charles
People are good and … they want to do their best.
Ray Charles
I used to love to look at the sun. That’s a bad thing for my eyes, but I liked that.
Ray Charles
I used to love to look at the moon at night. I would go out in the backyard and stare at it.
Ray Charles
Seeing or not seeing, life is still life. I don’t need to see to play or sing the way I do. That comes from within.
Ray Charles
If you believe in me, you ain’t goint to have no troubles.
Ray Charles
Like my blood it was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me - like food or water.
Ray Charles
I was born with music inside me. Like my ribs, my liver, my kidneys, my heart. Like my blood.
Ray Charles
I was a normal kid, mischievous and into everything.
Ray Charles
[On Mr Pit] The man ALWAYS let me play.
Ray Charles
[On being told he would go blind] I was never too frightened.
Ray Charles
I saw something bad, now I can’t see; I did bad, now bad is happening to me.
Ray Charles
[To another new blind student at breakfast] Ain’t you done yet boy? Can’t you see the people trying to clean up here? When we get outside, I’m gonna whip your ass.
Ray Charles
[On being mischievous at boarding school] I’d tie a piece of wire between two benches. Then I’d settle back and wait till the kid started walking down the sidewalk. I’d take great pleasure in hearing him fall on his face. Yeah, it might take a while, but I’d always pay back these kinds of debts. And I always did it in a way where I wouldn’t get hurt.
Ray Charles
[On having to learn to play music completely from memory] The roughest things were the classics. Some of them might have two hundred bars.
Ray Charles
[On him taken away all the keys off a piano after another blind student wanted to play the piano during Ray’s practice time] You only said you wanted the piano.
Ray Charles
I can make a living from music. But no-body’s hiring no black radio announcers.
Ray Charles
[As a child a friends pretending to broadcast an introduction on him being great] Yeah, Joe, Yeah. Say it again, say it again.
Ray Charles
[On being told his mother passed away when he was at boarding school] Nthing had hit me like that. … Not going blind. Nothing.
Ray Charles
[On his mother passing away] I was completely in another world. For a while I went a little crazy…
Ray Charles
I sat alone, silent, not moving a muscle or saying a word. Not crying, not eating, not praying. My mind just drifted somewhere out there in space.
Ray Charles
[On his mother passing away and being told by Ma Beck that ‘Your mama spent her whole life preparing you for this here day. You gotta carry on That’s all there is to it. That’s what she’d want. And that’s what you gotta do. You gotta carry on.’] I howled like a tiny infant, crying for the loss and the grief and the sweet memories that Mama had given me. Ma Beck broke me.
Ray Charles
I was born with music inside me. That’s the only explanation I know of, since none of my relatives could sing or play an instrument. Music was one of my parts, like my live, my kidneys, my heart. Like my blood.
Ray Charles
Mama was a rare human being. She was no softy; really strict as hell. I mean discipline was her middle name.
Ray Charles
Didn’t bother us any that we were poor. Didn’t bother us any because we didn’t know any better.
Ray Charles
Folks who don’t have much and ain’t ever had much can get along just fine. Just fine, tat is, till they start seeing that there’s more to be had.
Ray Charles
[On his parents] I wouldn’t bet a lot of money he and my mother were ever married.
Ray Charles
You got the right one, baby, uh-huh.
Ray Charles
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