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Creativity Quote by Little Richard

"I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs"

About this Quote

Little Richard turns self-myth into a moral absolute: action and feeling fused so tightly there is no alibi and no escape. “I did what I felt” is the familiar anthem of instinct, but he sharpens it with the reciprocal sting of “I felt what I did.” That second clause refuses the romance of consequence-free rebellion. If you live loud, you also absorb the feedback: the backlash, the bruises, the guilt, the glory. It’s a sentence built like a backbeat - two punchy measures, then the crash cymbal: “at all costs.”

The intent reads as both brag and testimony. Richard isn’t selling mere authenticity; he’s naming a price. Coming up through segregated venues and moral panic, channeling a flamboyance that American mainstream culture wanted either sanitized or condemned, he understood that self-expression wasn’t a brand choice - it was exposure. The subtext is a survival ethic for a performer who helped invent rock’s erotic charge while being policed for it: your body becomes the instrument, your instrument becomes evidence.

Context matters because Little Richard’s career is famously turbulent: peaks of ecstatic invention, then abrupt retreats into religious recommitment, then returns to the stage. “I felt what I did” sounds like a man haunted by the collision between Pentecostal fear and pop desire. The line works because it doesn’t resolve that contradiction. It insists the only honest ledger is lived experience, totaled up without discounts.

Quote Details

TopicMotivational
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Richard, Little. (2026, January 16). I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-did-what-i-felt-and-i-felt-what-i-did-at-all-122164/

Chicago Style
Richard, Little. "I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-did-what-i-felt-and-i-felt-what-i-did-at-all-122164/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-did-what-i-felt-and-i-felt-what-i-did-at-all-122164/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2026.

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I Did What I Felt and I Felt What I Did at All Costs - Little Richard
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About the Author

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Little Richard (December 5, 1932 - May 9, 2020) was a Musician from USA.

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