Duke Ellington famous quotes

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Art #Opportunity

Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.
-- Duke Ellington

#Love #Nice #Unconditional

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
-- Duke Ellington

#Inspirational #Life #Positive

How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, ' I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place.' Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
-- Duke Ellington

#Dog #Honesty #Children

Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It's not an occupation or profession, it's a compulsion.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Occupation #Compulsion

The artist must say it without saying it.
-- Duke Ellington

#Artist

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Daughter #Mother

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
-- Duke Ellington

#Inspiring #Music #Wise

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Two #Kind

Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.
-- Duke Ellington

#Art #Want #Dangerous

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Important #Musician

Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Play #Mistress

There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can't. Don't spend any time on the latter.
-- Duke Ellington

#Inspirational #Two #Worry

If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Feel Good #Sound

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Fate #Want

There is no art without intention.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Art #Intention

There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Together #Band

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Girl #Piano

A goal is a dream with a finish line.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Dream #Goal

Now I can say loudly and openly what I have been saying to myself on my knees.
-- Duke Ellington

#Knees

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Clouds #Sky

Roaming through the jungle of "Ohs" and "Ahs" searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Children #Mind

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Lying #Lines

Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom... In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Country #Expression

It's like an act of murder-you play with intent to commit something.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Play #Murder

Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
-- Duke Ellington

#Reflection #Music Is

A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
-- Duke Ellington

#Loss #Musical #Financial

People do not retire. They are retired by others.
-- Duke Ellington

#People #Age #Aging

Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Missing #Scrabble

I don’t believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.
-- Duke Ellington

#Believe #Kind #Problem

San Francisco is one of the great cultural plateaus of the world - one of the really urbane communities in the United States - one of the truly cosmopolitan places and for many, many years, it always has had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the world
-- Duke Ellington

#Years #San Francisco #Community

Every man prays in his own language.
-- Duke Ellington

#Men #Language #Praying

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
-- Duke Ellington

#Art #Gone #Art And Music

I don't need time. What I need is a deadline!
-- Duke Ellington

#Needs #Deadline #Time Of Need

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
-- Duke Ellington

#Jazz #Barometer

I don't need time, I need a deadline.
-- Duke Ellington

#Needs #Deadline #Time Of Need

If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original. ... I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. ... I don't need time, I need a deadline. ...There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. ... Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.
-- Duke Ellington

#Two #Play #Mistress

I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music.
-- Duke Ellington

#Dog #Creativity #Ice Cream

Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
-- Duke Ellington

#Survival #Selfishness #Virtue

The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.
-- Duke Ellington

#Jazz #Common #Slave

Simplicity is a most complex form
-- Duke Ellington

#Simplicity #Form

On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
-- Duke Ellington

#People #Taught #Becoming

I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King's son.
-- Duke Ellington

#Kings #Son #Night

Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
-- Duke Ellington

#Children #Honesty #Miracle

Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.
-- Duke Ellington

#Taste #Be True To Yourself #Belief

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Mean #Swings

Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
-- Duke Ellington

#Wings #Waiting #Sound

In music, as you develop a theme or musical idea, there are many points at which directions must be decided, and at any time I was in the throes of debate with myself, harmonically or melodically, I would turn to Billy Strayhorn. We would talk, and then the whole world would come into focus. The steady hand of his good judgment pointed to the clear way that was fitting for us. He was not, as he was often referred to by many, my alter ego. Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.
-- Duke Ellington

#Eye #Hands #Ideas

My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
-- Duke Ellington

#Writing #Problem #Interest

Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.
-- Duke Ellington

#Prayer #Doe #Language

Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven't; there's no proof of it.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Love Is #Proof

Critics have their purposes, and they're supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Thinking #Purpose

What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Mean #Doe

There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit Number2- Never forget rule number 1.
-- Duke Ellington

#Numbers #Never Quit #Quitting

Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don't dance, or who never did dance, don't really understand the beat... I know musicians who don't and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.
-- Duke Ellington

#Dance #Thinking #Play

The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now.
-- Duke Ellington

#New Orleans #Trying #Too Late

There is no art when one does something without intention.
-- Duke Ellington

#Art #Doe #Intention

I like any and all of my associations with music -writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.
-- Duke Ellington

#Writing #Play #Ifs And

Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.
-- Duke Ellington

#Self #Discipline #Virtue

Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing.
-- Duke Ellington

#Baby #Innovation #Deadline

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.
-- Duke Ellington

#Music #Done #Littles

If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.
-- Duke Ellington

#Jazz #Epitome #Armstrong

Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.
-- Duke Ellington

#Sweet #Littles #Dirt

New music? Hell, there's been no new music since Stravinsky.
-- Duke Ellington

#Hell #Stravinsky

Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
-- Duke Ellington

#Live For Today #Fans #Alive

There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed.
-- Duke Ellington

#Successful #Two #Sound

New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
-- Duke Ellington

#New York #Dollars #Cadillacs

Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
-- Duke Ellington

#Thoughtful #Past #Matter

A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.
-- Duke Ellington

#Beauty #Dolls #Satin

You've got to find a way of saying it without saying it.
-- Duke Ellington

#Way

My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of - or reincarnated from - royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.
-- Duke Ellington

#Mother #Blessed #Taken

The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern' art. What is more African than a Picasso?
-- Duke Ellington

#Art #Modern #Modern Art

Hurry, get on board, it's comin', listen to those rails a-thrumming all aboard. Get on the "A" train, soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem.
-- Duke Ellington

#Travel #Boards #Sugar

Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.
-- Duke Ellington

#Two #Numbers