“There is no art when one does something without intention.”

Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.

Simplicity is a most complex form.

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

Dancing 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.

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

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

Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.

Problems are chances for us to do our best.

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.

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.

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

Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.

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.

Yet, every time God’s children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.

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

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

Something brought you here. Trust that it will satisfy its own intention to take you Home.

Revolutionaries must proclaim their ideas courageously … and express their intentions so that no one is deceived.

What really pleases the Spiritual Master is our intent and the quality of our character.

If we do the right thing with right intent that is actually our success.

There is in Albert Camus’ literary craftsmanship a seductive intelligence that could almost make a reader dismiss his philosophical intentions if he had not insisted on making them so clear.

How often it is that a small action becomes great by its intention. And how often it is that a great action becomes small by its intention.

Perhaps a great deed is belittled by an intention. And perhaps a small deed, by sincere intention, is made great

If you are going to buy clothes, choose them with the intention of welcoming them into your home and caring for them.