Ahmad Jamal

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

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.

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.

You’ve got a big, big problem if you get caught up in what people say. If you’re gonna live for what people say, you might as well lay down and forget it. Because it doesn’t work that way.

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

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

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others… This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

For we put the power in the people.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.