“White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything – you know what I mean?”

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can’t be trusted.

I’m out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I’m still playing.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

I don’t pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself…and I’m too vain to play anything I think is bad.

Food makes my mind sluggish.

If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you’re in love.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.

Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery.

Some musicians play with their heart, you know what I mean? I don’t know what to tell a person that can’t – if you can’t tell a person what you’re talkin’ about when they’re rushin’ or droppin’ the tempo, you get somebody else.

For me, music and life are all about style.

Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself.

Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual.

The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative – to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

Know yourself to improve yourself.

We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won’t be for another thousand years?

The considerations upon which expectations of prospective yields are based are partly existing facts which we can assume to be known more or less for certain, and partly future events which can only be forecasted with more or less confidence.

Presidents in both parties – from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan – have known that our free-enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity.