Ahmad Jamal

I would like to be a scholar in whatever I do, a scholar is never finished, he is always seeking and I am always seeking.

The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people say about your work.

You don’t create things, you discover things.

Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well.

Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.

The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people are gonna say about your life and your work.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That’s right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.

There is a great deal of human nature in people.

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose – some for cash and some for political influence. We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?

Do Good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

In peace, as a wise man, he should make suitable preparation for war.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.