My ego only needs a good rhythm section

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

Clearly we could devastate the world... as far as we know, the Earth is the only place in the universe where there is life. Its continued survival now rests in our hands

I enjoy going to campuses and reading and doing a class or teaching and then running away and not having to grade papers.

Whether you think Jesus was God or not, you must admit he was a first-rate political economist.

Hurry? I have no time to hurry.

The test before us as a people is not whether our commitments match our will and our courage; but whether we have the will and courage to match our commitments.

To have known how to change the past into a few saddened smiles-is this not to master the future?

I’ve got no criminal record.

The more you populate the 360-degree space, the more difficult it is to cut within that.

How many Buddhists does it take to change a lightbulb? Many in body, one in mind.

Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.