Don Cherry

Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.

I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.

We are each a figment of our own imagination.

True freedom is being free from the search for freedom.

It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you don’t stop.

I don’t know how to drive.

No one can be helped unless he can be put in the way of helping himself.

Now I’m a warrior.

I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests.

For a year, I had all sorts of weirdos coming on to me.

I think every parent, every generation has wanted their children to do better and have a higher standard of living. But I think there’s too much guilt.

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

Like an enemy I knew as intimately as any friend, I came to know the nagging, constant emptiness of the incongruent life. I ignored myself and lived for people, purposes, and goals that weren’t my own. I betrayed who I was and instead accepted a fictional substitute that was defined from the outside in.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.