Louis Armstrong

I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.

Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

Man, all music is folk music. You ain’t never heard no horse sing a song, have you?

There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.

Music is like wine, the less you know about it the sweeter you like it. 

For years the trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We starved.

To rise above the crowd, discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition.

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

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

Music gave me the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself. It was a palliative, a relief.

The first jazz I heard was Duke Ellington. I was learning to play classical music, but my teacher swapped out those lessons for jazz lessons because I had started adding grace notes to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

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.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.

I became a singer to sing my songs. They’re so hip who else is going to sing them?

If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.

Each time I have the opportunity to play, it’s another chance to tell the truth.