Little Richard Quotes

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

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

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

We're gonna have some fun tonight.

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

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

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

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.

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 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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

No, I've never truly been a minister.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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'm very much a gentleman in what I do.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I love God, and I'm a follower.

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

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

I only wore makeup when I went onstage.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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!'