B. B. King

Touring a segregated America – forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most ‘cos you don’t realise the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty, like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less than a person.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother’s aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

I don’t think it’s meant for man to know everything at once.

The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I’ll keep playing until I feel like I can’t.

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

Water from the white fountain didn’t taste any better than from the black fountain.

We have more people than ever using foodbanks, we have a greater number of people being homeless and many people in housing stress.

You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.

The official mission of NATO was changed to become to be-to control and safeguard the global energy system, sea lanes, pipelines and so on. And, of course, on the side, it’s acting as an intervention force for the United States.

As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. What they call themselves doesn’t matter to me.

Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.

As important as it is to change the lightbulbs, it is more important to change the laws.

We can win an awful lot of people into the political spectrum, by offering something that is … radical.

If you want my personal attitude, I would tell you that I don’t care about a person’s sexual orientation.

You can do a lot more with weapons and politeness than just politeness.

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.

It’s important to remember that the constitutional system was not designed in the first place to defend the rights of people. Rather, the rights of people had to be balanced, as Madison put it, against what he called ‘the rights of property.’

Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

I don’t believe in playing games. It’s not something I would do.

Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.