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A goal is a dream with a finish line.

Duke Ellington

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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Communication Dance Important Myself People
Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Be Yourself Effort Hard Work Inspirational Self Love
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Bond Friendship Myself Right
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

Believe Black Kind White Yourself
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Knowledge Master Musician
Simplicity is a most complex form.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Complex Form Simplicity
Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Loud Myself Open
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Blue Energy Myself Writing
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.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Carry Criticism Focus Purpose Thinking
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Lazy Limitation Procrastination
There is no art without intention.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Creation Creativity Intention One Liner
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

Contribution Expression Music Myself Problem
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!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Money Myself Pay Togetherness
Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Creation Instinct Past Thinking
A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Financial Loss Musical Profit
Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Ourselves Selfish Survive Virtue

A goal is a dream with a finish line.

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A goal is a dream with a finish line.

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