Top 30 Chuck Berry Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “All I want for Christmas is a rock n roll electric guitar...”

— Chuck Berry

Featured in: Guitar Quotes

2. “Of the five most important things in life, health is first, education or knowledge is second, and wealth is third. I forget the other two.”

— Chuck Berry

3. “Describe Elvis Presley? He was the greatest who ever was, is or ever will be.”

— Chuck Berry

4. “He never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play his guitar like he was ringing a bell.”

— Chuck Berry

5. “A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song Yesterday. Listen to the lyrics.”

— Chuck Berry

6. “I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn’t paint.”

— Chuck Berry

7. “My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling, won’t you play with my ding-a-ling.”

— Chuck Berry

8. “Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

— Chuck Berry

9. “He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell.”

— Chuck Berry

10. “The Big Band Era is my era. People say, ‘Where did you get your style from?’ I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That’s the best way I could explain it.”

— Chuck Berry

11. “Music is an important part of our culture and record stores play a vital part in keeping the power of music alive.”

— Chuck Berry

12. “Back in the class room, open your books, keep up, the teacher don’t know how mean she looks.”

— Chuck Berry

13. “I’m a millionaire, but I cut the grass. And each time I cut it, it’s my grass. And that is satisfying.”

— Chuck Berry

14. “I would sing the blues if I had the blues.”

— Chuck Berry

15. “Could you imagine the way I felt, I couldn’t unfasten her safety belt. All the way home I held a grudge, for the safety belt that wouldn’t budge.”

— Chuck Berry

16. “Don’t bother me, leave me alone. Anyway, I’m almost grown.”

— Chuck Berry

17. “It’s gotta be rock and roll music, if you wanna dance with me.”

— Chuck Berry

18. “All in all it was my intention to hold both the black and the white clientele by voicing the different kinds of songs in their customary tongues.”

— Chuck Berry

19. “Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering “who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?””

— Chuck Berry

20. “This is my 1963 Ford. It was the only car I could A-Ford.”

— Chuck Berry

21. “Rock is my child and my grandfather.”

— Chuck Berry

22. “A contract is an ask game, and if it asks for an hour, and I submit to an hour, then it’s an hour. When I look at a contract, I look at the obligation – where, when, how long, the compensation. If I agree to it, that’s the way it is. I have an obligation. They have an obligation.”

— Chuck Berry

23. “Maybellene, why can’t you be true?”

— Chuck Berry

24. “Science and religion are both the same thing. They’re there; they’re life. If it’s not science, it’s not a fact.”

— Chuck Berry

25. “My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.”

— Chuck Berry

26. “You don’t just go to the studio and say, ‘I’m going to write a hit.’ It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.”

— Chuck Berry

27. “I think I see her, please let me off this bus. Nadine, honey, is that you?”

— Chuck Berry

28. “All were artists, playing foolish, having fights and making love as if the rest of the world had no racial problems whatsoever.”

— Chuck Berry

29. “Rock ‘n’ roll accepted me and paid me, even though I loved the big bands I went that way because I wanted a home of my own. I had a family. I had to raise them. Let’s don’t leave out the economics. No way.”

— Chuck Berry

30. “You know, your ears record. You might can sing a song once you hear it.”

— Chuck Berry

31. “Prejudice doesn’t make me mad. It just – I guess ‘pisses me off’ is the word.”

— Chuck Berry

32. “Praise doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t judge myself.”

— Chuck Berry

33. “If the people in the audience are talking, you’re being ignored. If the people are gazing at you, you’ve got something they want to hear.”

— Chuck Berry

34. “Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me, but about the people listening.”

— Chuck Berry