Duke Ellington Quotes (29 Quotes)

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.

Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.

You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it.

People do not retire. They are retired by others.

Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso.

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

Playing "bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

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

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.

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

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

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

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.

American Music, Texas Style.

Roaming through the jungle of oohs and ahs, searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

in recognition of his musical genius, which evoked aesthetically the principles of democracy through the medium of jazz and thus made an indelible contribution to art and culture.

There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter.

A problem is your chance to do your best.

A man is a god in ruins.

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.

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.

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.

We aren't worried about posterity we want it to sound good right now.

It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.