John R. Cash was an American country singer-songwriter (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932–September 12, 2003). Themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption were prevalent in much of Cash’s music, especially in the latter stages of his career. He was well-known for his deep, soothing bass-baritone voice, which had a distinctive Tennessee accent.
43 Johnny Cash Quotes
- “I learn from my mistakes. It’s a very painful way to learn, but without pain, the old saying is, there’s no gain.”
2. “Trust gets you killed. Love gets you hurt. And being real gets you hated.”
3. “Life is the question and life is the answer, and God is the reason and love is the way.”
4. “Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old.”
5. “Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.”
6. “it’s good to know who hates you and it is good to be hated by the right people”
7. “The more I learn, the more excited I get.”
8. “Life is rough so you gotta be tough.”
9. “Loneliness is emptiness, but happiness is you.”
10. “My arms are too short to box with God.”
Johnny Cash Quotes About Life
11. “I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.”
12. “All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate. – I choose love.”
13. “You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.”
14. “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.”
15. “Beneath the stains of time the feeling disappears, you are someone else I am still right here.”
16. “Happiness is being at peace, being with loved ones, being comfortable… but most of all, it’s having those loved ones.”
17. “There’s no more simple life with simple choices for the young.”
18. “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.”
19. “What have I become, my sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away, in the end.”
20. “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.”
21. “Jesus will not fail me, I shall not be moved”
22. “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.”
23. “Life and love go on, let the music play.”
24. “Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old, a friend when you’re lonely, or peace to your soul.”
Johnny Cash Quotes On Love and Loss
25. “You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good.”
26. “I read novels but I also read the Bible. And study it, you know? And the more I learn, the more excited I get.”
27. “They’re powerful, those songs. At times they’ve been my only way back, the only door out of the dark, bad places the black dog calls home.”
28. “You can choose love or hate…I choose love.”
29. “If you don’t get outside every day, even for a minute, you have not appreciated what God has done. It makes you grateful for our surroundings, and it starts your day differently.”
30. “You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good.”
31. “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.”
32. “Let me tell you, Mr. teacher when you say you’ll make me right, in five hundred years of fighting not one Indian turned white.”
Thought-Provoking Johnny Cash Quotes
33. “God’s the final judge for Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash too. That’s solely in the hands of God.”
34. “When it gets dark and everybody’s gone home and the lights are turned off, it’s just me and her.”
35. “You miss a lot of opportunities by making mistakes, but that’s part of it: knowing that you’re not shut out forever, and that there’s a goal you still can reach.”
36. “Those that have lived longer than us always have something to teach us, that we can take with us for the rest of our lives.”
37. “The things that have always been important: to be a good man, to try to live my life the way God would have me, to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life, to do my work without looking back, to give it all I’ve got, and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.”
38. “If you aren’t gonna say exactly how and what you feel, you might as well not say anything at all.”
39. “The gospel of Christ must always be an open door with a welcome sign for all.”
40. “No matter how much you’ve sinned, no matter how much you’ve stumbled, no matter how much you fall, no matter how far you’ve got from God, don’t give up. You can still be redeemed. As someone says, keep the faith.”
41. “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.”
42. “I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, But is there because he’s a victim of the times. I wear the black for those who never read”
43. “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.”
In 1986, Cash published Man in White, his only novel, which chronicles Saul’s transformation into the Apostle Paul. In 1990, he recorded Johnny Cash Reading the complete New Testament.
Additional Read: Johnny Cash: The Autobiography