BB King quotes

The wonderful thing about learning something is that nobody can take it from us.
- BB King

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
- BB King

People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.
- BB King

I was born on a plantation, and things weren't so good. We didn't have any money. I never thought of the word 'poor' 'til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you're not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.
- BB King

She's Dynamite' was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n' roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n' roll.
- BB King

I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.
- BB King

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me.
- BB King

My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess - she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived, I probably wouldn't be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.
- BB King

Water from the white fountain didn't taste any better than from the black fountain.
- BB King

When we went into World War II, I was a tractor driver then. I drove tractors on the plantation. So when they start calling people my age, 18, up, I was one they called.
- BB King

I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.
- BB King

I'm trying to get people to see that we are our brother's keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.
- BB King

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn't know how other people would take it.
- BB King

Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die to get there!
- BB King

The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.
- BB King

Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway.
- BB King

I've put up with more humiliation than I care to remember.
- BB King

I don't have a favorite song that I've written. But I do have a favorite song: 'Always on My Mind,' the Willie Nelson version. If I could sing it like he do, I would sing it every night. I like the story it tells.
- BB King

I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
- BB King

If you can't get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.
- BB King