Henry Ford

Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.

No one ever wins a war.

Thinking calls for facts; facts are found by digging; but he who has gathered this wealth is well equipped for life.

Whatever your goal in life, the beginning is knowledge and experience- or, briefly work.

A peaceful nation is one that has the means to make war and restrains.

A happy and contented nation is an example to the whole world. Where there is contentment there must be peace.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

I don’t want to sing anything that doesn’t come real.

We all do ‘do, re, mi’ but you got to find the other notes yourself.

It’s not what they think, it’s about what’s best for the music.

Music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

All that I’ve played, all that I’ve sung, I couldn’t have done any other way.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.

Jazz can only enhance the Classical side and Classical can only enhance the Jazz side.

I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn’t making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don’t understand the part of money in running a band.