Duke Ellington
My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.Collection: Leadership
Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.Collection: Famous
There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter.Collection: Time
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.Collection: Art
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.Collection: Chance
Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.Collection: Art
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.Collection: Music
Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.Collection: Love
By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it.
Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
A man is a god in ruins.
Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.
People do not retire. They are retired by others.
Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.
On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.Collection: Music
Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom... In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.Collection: Music
Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession, it's a compulsion.Collection: Music
A goal is a dream with a finish line.Collection: Inspirational
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.Collection: Music
Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.Collection: Two
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.Collection: Inspirational
If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!Collection: Band
Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.Collection: Prayer
You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it's bad.Collection: Listening
The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.Collection: Rocks
Simplicity is a most complex formCollection: Simplicity
Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.Collection: Taste
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!Collection: Inspirational
How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, ' I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place.' Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.Collection: Dog
The artist must say it without saying it.Collection: Artist
Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.Collection: Reflection
Problems are chances for us to do our best.Collection: Chance
You've got to find a way of saying it without saying it.Collection: Way
It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary lineCollection: Music
Of the One O'Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: "I wish it were mine".Collection: White
New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.Collection: New York
The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.Collection: Musician
If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.Collection: Music
There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed.Collection: Successful
Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.Collection: Survival
Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.Collection: Music
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?Collection: Art
My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?Collection: Music
I don't need time, I need a deadline.Collection: Needs