Mahalia Jackson Quotes

Faith and prayer are the vitamins of the soul; man cannot live in health without them.

God can make you anything you want to be, but you have to put everything in his hands.

When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong.

I sing God's music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.

Without a song, each day would be a century.

It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test.

Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have the feeling there is a cure for what's wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on.

Everybody needs somebody.

Baby, black promoters oppressed me before white promoters ever got hold of me. Don't talk skin to me.

Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.

If you believe in God, He will open the windows of heaven and pour blessings upon you.

I close my eyes when I sing so I can feel the song better.

The mind and the voice by themselves are not sufficient.

The Lord doesn't like us to be dead. Be alive. Sometimes I dance to the glory of the Lord, because He said so.

The old Devil gets mad when you're trying to do good. Pray that God will move the stumbling blocks.

How can you sing of Amazing Grace? How can you sing prayerfully of heaven and earth and all God's wonders without using your hands?

My hands, my feet, I throw my whole body to say all that is within me.

Money just draws flies.

Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.

Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals?

Gospel music in those days of the early 1930s was really taking wing. It was the kind of music colored people had left behind them down South and they liked it because it was just like a letter from home.

Sometimes you ask God for something and you don't know what you're asking.

Put your mind on the gospel. And remember - there's one God for all.

If you don't like Louis Armstrong, you don't know how to love.

Someday the sun is going to shine down on me in some faraway place.