Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
DUKE ELLINGTONOf the One O’Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: “I wish it were mine”.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
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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.
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A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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The artist must say it without saying it.
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There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
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Yet, every time God’s children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
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I don’t need time, I need a deadline.
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Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
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There is no art without intention.
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Simplicity is a most complex form.
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There is no art when one does something without intention.
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A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
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A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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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.
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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!
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Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
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Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
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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.
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There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
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By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
DUKE ELLINGTON