Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death over a career spanning more than six decades. These Duke Ellington quotes will motivate you.
Best Duke Ellington Quotes
- “There are 2 rules in life:
Number 1- Never quit
Number2- Never forget rule number 1.” ~ Duke Ellington - “There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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 , Duke Ellington quotes about music
- “Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.” ~ Duke Ellington
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“A goal is a dream with a finish line.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!” ~ Duke Ellington
- “The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “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
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“Simplicity is a most complex form” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Love is supreme and unconditional; like is nice but limited.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Create, and be true to yourself, and depend only on your own good taste.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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 is the total reflection of beauty.” ~ Duke Ellington
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“Sing sweet, but put a little dirt in it.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “Problems are chances for us to do our best.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don’t want it.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.” ~ Duke Ellington , Duke Ellington quotes about jazz
- “The artist must say it without saying it.” ~ Duke Ellington
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“There is no art without intention.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “You’ve got to find a way of saying it without saying it.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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 -
“The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.” ~ Duke Ellington , Duke Ellington quotes on money
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“Gray skies are just clouds passing over.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “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
- “A Satin Doll is a woman who is as pretty on the inside as she is on the outside.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
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“What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?” ~ Duke Ellington
- “By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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 Quotes
- “Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.” ~ Duke Ellington
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“Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “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
- “Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.” ~ Duke Ellington
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“People do not retire. They are retired by others.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “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
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“A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “It’s like an act of murder – you play with intent to commit something.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “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
- “I don’t need time, I need a deadline.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Every man prays in his own language.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “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
- “Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.” ~ Duke Ellington
