We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine, I look right into the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.

Don't do nothing halfway, else you find yourself dropping more than can be picked up.

What we play is life.

I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right - shame on you.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.

Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.

And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.

Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment

Look for your choices, pick the best one, then go with it.

If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.

Everyone else is waiting for eternity and the shamans are saying, 'How about tonight?'

How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms

IBM Plus Reality Plus Humanism = Sociology.

When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.

Always the same thing.

But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

I have always been conscious of the importance and the strength of nationalism, and this has led me straight to the acknowledgment of the nationalism of the Palestinian people.