Duke Ellington Quotes

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.

There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit Number2- Never forget rule number 1.

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.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

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!

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

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.

Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.

You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it's bad.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

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.

Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

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.

You've got to find a way of saying it without saying it.

Simplicity is a most complex form

There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!

Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.

Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.

A goal is a dream with a finish line.

My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of - or reincarnated from - royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven't; there's no proof of it.

Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.

Roaming through the jungle of "Ohs" and "Ahs", searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.

Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

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 line

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

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. ... I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. ... I don't need time, I need a deadline. ...There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. ... Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.

Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.

Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.

New music? Hell, there's been no new music since Stravinsky.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?

There is no art without intention.

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?

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.

In music, as you develop a theme or musical idea, there are many points at which directions must be decided, and at any time I was in the throes of debate with myself, harmonically or melodically, I would turn to Billy Strayhorn. We would talk, and then the whole world would come into focus. The steady hand of his good judgment pointed to the clear way that was fitting for us. He was not, as he was often referred to by many, my alter ego. Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!

Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.

The artist must say it without saying it.

I don’t believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.