Duke Ellington Quotes

The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That’s the pulse.The African pulse. It’s all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it’s all got the African pulse.

How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, ‘ I don’t dare show you what I am because I don’t trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don’t love me anyway, you’re a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place.’ 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.

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

Problems are chances for us to do our best.

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.

I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.

It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.

A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.

You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.

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.