A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
DUKE ELLINGTONJazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
More Duke Ellington Quotes
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Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven’t; there’s no proof of it.
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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.
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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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It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.
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A goal is a dream with a finish line.
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Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
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You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
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Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
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Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.
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There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it’s successful; if it doesn’t it has failed.
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Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
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It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line
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Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
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Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
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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 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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Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
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I’m sure critics have their purpose, 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 he did.
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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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A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
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New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
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New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
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I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
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The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
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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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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