Ahmad Jamal

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

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.

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.

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 are gonna say about your life and your work.

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

Fierce eagles do not produce timorous doves.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.

You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.