J.B. Morton Quotes

Get up from that piano. You hurtin' its feelings.

I had intended to have gone into Africa incognito. But the fact that a white man, even an American, was about to enter Africa was soon known all over Zanzibar.

The Europeans and Americans residing in the town of Zanzibar are either Government officials, independent merchants, or agents for a few great mercantile houses in Europe and America.

My contributions were many: First clown director, with witty sayings and flashily dressed, now called master of ceremonies.

One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear.

I'll never get a part in a huge action blockbuster.

What shocks me is that so many people leave care and become homeless, and when you're homeless you get into crime, prostitution and drugs, and it is a vicious circle. That's what we need to change.

You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing.

Arbor Day is not like other holidays. Each of those reposes on the past, while Arbor Day proposes for the future.

Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics.

Never give a bureaucrat a chance to say no.

To make a million, start with $900,000.

Vegetarians have wicked, shifty eyes, and laugh in a cold calculating manner. They pinch little children, steal stamps, drink water, favor beards.

Winners aren't perfect. They made fewer mistakes than their rivals.

There is no limit to the power of loving.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

Justice must not only be seen to be done but has to be seen to be believed.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she will find her courage wanting.

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

You can't come to a new point of view until you realize what your brainwashing has been.

Erratum. In my article on the Price of Milk, 'Horses' should have read 'Cows' throughout.

The more experience and insight I obtain into human nature, the more convinced do I become that the greater portion of a man is purely animal.

The winner in a political contest is determined by the number and the effectiveness of the activists on the respective sides.

Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange "abnormal" events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries.

Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures.

The tragedy of music is that it begins with perfection.

A grand old odalisque should never deign to turn housewife.

Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance.

I do not claim any of the creation of the blues, although I have written many of them even before Mr. Handy had any blues published. I heard them when I was knee-high to a duck.

A library is a room where the murders take place.

We do not hear what we hear..., only what we remember.

The composer makes plans, music laughs.

It's a terrible thing, isn't it, the way we throw people away?

Love ... is a quicksilver word; though you see plainly where it is, you have only to put your finger on it to find that it is not there but someplace else.

Do we have anything in music that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away?

Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman. It is paradoxical act of sadistic admiration.

Each generation of humanity takes the earth as trustees... We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.

Socialism is a return to primitive conditions.

I believe it is my duty as a performer to raise issues in the world of things we're afraid to look at.

Most music is metaphor, but Wolff is not. I am not metaphor either. Parable, maybe. Cage is sermon.

Doctor Livingstone, I presume?

The Rothschilds have conquered the world more thoroughly, more cunningly, and much more lastingly than all the Caesars before.

Reluctance to begin is quick to befriend procrastination. . . .

I never understood what rules I was supposed to learn, and what rules I was supposed to break

The inner journey is as individual as our thumbprint. We need to guide others on their way and never impose our way upon them.

The American Race is marked by a brown complexion; long, black, lank hair; and deficient beard.

If you think you might have secret information listening to me, you're lost.

Compositionally I always wanted to be like Fred Astaire.

Music is essentially built upon primitive memory structures.