Top 120 Johnny Cash Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “God gives us life and takes us away as He sees fit.”

— Johnny Cash

52. “Inside the walls of a prison my body may be, but my Lord has set my soul free.”

— Johnny Cash

53. “Everything I have and everything I do is now given completely to Jesus Christ.”

— Johnny Cash

54. “I am not a Christian artist, I am an artist who is a Christian.”

— Johnny Cash

55. “I’m thrilled to death with life.”

— Johnny Cash

56. “The battle against the dark one and the clinging to the right one is what my life is about.”

— Johnny Cash

57. “When people ask me who my favorite country singer is, I say, ‘You mean besides George Jones?’”

— Johnny Cash

58. “Gospel music is so ingrained into my bones. I can’t do a concert without singing a gospel song. It’s what I was raised on.”

— Johnny Cash

59. “You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.”

— Johnny Cash

60. “Life is – the way God has given it to me was just a platter – a golden platter of life laid out there for me. Its been beautiful.”

— Johnny Cash

61. “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.”

— Johnny Cash

62. “Creative people have to be fed from the divine source. I have to get fed. I had to get filled up in order to pour out.”

— Johnny Cash

63. “Trust gets you killed. Love gets you hurt. And being real gets you hated.”

— Johnny Cash

64. “Love is a burning thing and it makes a firey ring.”

— Johnny Cash

65. “Stop your ears and close your eyes and try to find the face of love.”

— Johnny Cash

66. “I read novels but I also read the Bible. And study it, you know? And the more I learn, the more excited I get.”

— Johnny Cash

67. “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”

— Johnny Cash

68. “San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell. May your walls fall and may I live to tell.”

— Johnny Cash

69. “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.”

— Johnny Cash

70. “My father was a man of love. He always loved me to death. He worked hard in the fields, but my father never hit me. Never. I don’t ever remember a really cross, unkind word from my father.”

— Johnny Cash

71. “The ones that you’re calling wild are going to be the leaders in a little while.”

— Johnny Cash

72. “I’m very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.”

— Johnny Cash

73. “It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

— Johnny Cash

74. “Beneath the stains of time the feeling disappears, you are someone else I am still right here.”

— Johnny Cash

75. “You’re so heavenly minded, you’re no earthly good.”

— Johnny Cash

76. “I could wrap myself in the warm cocoon of a song and go anywhere.”

— Johnny Cash

77. “I think in my world of religion, you’re called to preach or you don’t preach. Called by God to preach. I never been ordained by God to preach the gospel. I have a calling, it’s called to perform and sing.”

— Johnny Cash

78. “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.”

— Johnny Cash

79. “I was wearing black clothes almost from the beginning. I feel comfortable in black. I felt like black looked good onstage, that it was attractive, so I started wearing it all the time.”

— Johnny Cash

80. “Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.”

— Johnny Cash

81. “My mother told me to keep on singing, and that kept me working through the cotton fields. She said God has his hand on you. You’ll be singing for the world someday.”

— Johnny Cash

82. “The hardest thing for me in Vietnam wasn’t seeing the wounded and dead. It was watching the big transport jets come in, bringing loads of fresh new boys for the war.”

— Johnny Cash

83. “I’ve been flushed from the bathroom of your heart.”

— Johnny Cash

84. “The fire and excitement may be gone now that we don’t go out there and sing them anymore, but the ring of fire still burns around you and I, keeping our love hotter than a pepper sprout.”

— Johnny Cash

85. “He drank his first strong liquor then to calm his shaking hand, and tried to tell himself at last he had become a man.”

— Johnny Cash

86. “Come on boys, you must listen unto me, lay off the whiskey and let that cocaine be.”

— Johnny Cash

87. “It’s all fleeting. As fame is fleeting, so are all the trappings of fame fleeting. The money, the clothes, the furniture.”

— Johnny Cash

88. “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.”

— Johnny Cash

89. “God’s the final judge for Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash too. That’s solely in the hands of God.”

— Johnny Cash

90. “We’ll all be equal under the grass, and God’s got a heaven for country trash.”

— Johnny Cash

91. “A person knows when it just seems to feel right to them. Listen to your heart.”

— Johnny Cash

92. “I expect my life to end pretty soon. You know, I’m 71 years old. I have great faith, though. I have unshakable faith.”

— Johnny Cash

93. “Death and hell are never full, and neither are men’s eyes.”

— Johnny Cash

94. “When I record somebody else’s song, I have to make it my own or it doesn’t feel right. I’ll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn’t know it!”

— Johnny Cash

95. “Understand your man, meditate on it.”

— Johnny Cash

96. “When I think about country music, I think about America.”

— Johnny Cash

97. “My daddy left home when I was three and he didn’t leave much to Ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.”

— Johnny Cash

98. “I wear black because I’m comfortable in it. But then in the summertime when it’s hot I’m comfortable in light blue.”

— Johnny Cash

99. “He went up to heaven, located his dog. Not only that, but he rejoined his arm.”

— Johnny Cash

100. “I like to sit on the front porch of an old cabin I built in the woods and just listen to the birds; I like to fish in the pond and I always throw the fish back.”

— Johnny Cash