You know, when Michael Jackson does the moonwalk, he’s showing off! When Prince or Hendrix do a guitar solo, it’s confidence! I would hate to be at a show and some nervous wreck is sweating up there and doesn’t feel like he deserves to be there.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

If you are surrounded by your competition and you are outworking these people, outmaneuvering these people, it’s hard not to let your confidence take over. It just builds and builds and builds.

I never expect to lose. Even when I’m the underdog, I still prepare a victory speech.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

Magic has five championships. I have five championships. I’m pretty sure we both know what we’re doing.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

Without a tutor to help me in the study of Marxism-Leninism, I was no more than a theorist and, of course, had total confidence in the Soviet Union.

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.

Confidence is always a good thing to have going into the weekend. Especially where it’s quite difficult to put the lap together.

I say that in the most humble way: I always knew that I could perform with the best of ‚em and I could deliver with the best of ‚em.

When I say something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.

I don’t think anybody in America ought to be scared.

Because of my wrestling background, nothing a director can throw at me on a set can faze me.

Confidentially, the type of male I find most enjoyable for a friend is one who has enough fire and assurance to speak up for his convictions.

I have a self-defense mind. I’ve had it all my life.

The beauty of me being on stage is I have a voice.

Yes, some people say to me you’re too skinny, but never a skinny person says that to me, only people who could lose a few pounds say that.

It’s always great to perform at home in the good ol‘ U.S.A.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.

Confidence comes from discipline and training.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.

I was everything an R&B singer wasn’t. I wasn’t in shape. I wasn’t a pretty boy.

I don’t want people at my shows to come out and say, ‚I just saw a cool show.‘ I want them to say, ‚I had fun at the show.‘ I want it to be a collaborative thing and be part of the audience and have them be part of me. I try to interact with everyone there and have them be equal to me because they are.

Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

I’m not a centerfold.

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

I have a deep, deep belief that if I tell you I’m going to crack you with a clean shot to the chin inside one minute of the first round and you will be unconscious, well, then that’s what will happen.

I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ‚em out, I pick the round.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.

I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way – I hope it never will.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

My inspiration is R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Prince – for the vocals, anyway.

Our most tragic error may have been our inability to establish a rapport and a confidence with the press and television with the communication media. I don’t think the press has understood me.

My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I’m much more expressive off stage.

I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

I know what I believe, I know what I want to do, and I’m just comfortable saying it, and laying it out there.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

Prince turned experimental music into pop music. ‚When Doves Cry,‘ the whole ‚Purple Rain‘ soundtrack – he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt ‚House of Balloons‘ was.

For me, it’s enough that I have the first and last word.

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

When I was born, that was the music my mother was listening to. Michael Jackson is a third parent to me.

One of the things I’ve told men over and over and over and over is if you’re being rejected by all the women that you approach, it’s not the women!

I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

There was a moment when Prince did rock & roll with a sponge-y seductive sound. I think that’s what was in our head for ‚Get On Your Boots.‘ But actually, the song is much more punk rock.

I try not to go around looking like a hag.