I hate the idea of turning jazz into homework assignments. I would never have a quiz saying, "Who's the clarinetist on the Hot Five?" I don't care. If you like the clarinetist, you'll know who it is.

Jazz is for joy. It's for euphoria, it's for emotion, and anguish, and excitement, and all of the joys that great art can produce, and if it loses that, then it's lost everything.

You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.

Bing Crosby said that Armstrong is "the beginning and the end of music in America," and he wasn't far wrong.

People should not feel intimidated by received wisdom. You have to discover it yourself. If I tell you that Armstrong is great, it's meaningless; you have to hear it.

Humility is a very important trait in a critic.

If you're genuinely candid and expressive then you're never wrong, even when you are wrong.

A lie distorts the image of reality. It is a delusion of the human mind which can disrupt an individual's sense of what is morally right or wrong.

Science explained people, but could not understand them.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Cuz I can count on one hand the men who’ve loved me, not in the Biblical sense—I don’t have enough digits for that—but who have truly loved me.

We make such terrible mistakes with visual choices about beauty.

You need to get up in the morning and say, 'Boy, I'm going to - in my own stupid way - save the world today.'

Naming a center after a person who is still alive can make it seem that an individual somehow on their own was able to accomplish what he accomplished.

The scientist's inquiry into the causes of things is providing an ever more extensive understanding of nature.

I used to say I would never run unless I was being chased by someone with a gun. Now I'm a little obsessed with it!

Economic power is not the same as strength of national character. Our country may be rich in goods, but we are poor in spirit.