Quotes from Louis Armstrong

I gathered that those two Big-shot Boys, Joe + Fletcher, just was afraid to let me sing, thinking maybe I'd sort of ruin their reputations with their musical public. They not knowing that I had been singing all of my life. In churches, etc. I had one of the finest All Boys Quartets that ever walked the streets of New Orleans.

You blows who you is.

It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country.

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

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.

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

To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!

Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.

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

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.

Never play anything the same way twice.

I don't need words. It's all in the phrasing.

[Bebop is] Chinese music.

When you're dead, you're done.

If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll.

There's only two ways to sum up music; either it's good or it's bad. If it's good you don't mess about it, you just enjoy it.

The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell!

Give me a kiss to build a dream on And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss Sweetheart, I ask no more than this A kiss to build a dream on.

Never play a thing the same way twice.

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

I warm up at home. I hit the stage, I'm ready, whether it's rehearsal or anything.

There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.

I was determined to play my horn against all odds, and I had to sacrifice a whole lot of pleasure to do so.