There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit. Number2- Never forget rule number 1.
DUKE ELLINGTONDancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don’t dance, or who never did dance, don’t really understand the beat. I know musicians who don’t and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
-
-
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
DUKE ELLINGTON -
New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
DUKE ELLINGTON -
Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
DUKE ELLINGTON






