Quotes from Louis Armstrong

There's a thing I've dreamed of all my life, and I'll be damned if it don't look like it's about to come true-to be King of the Zulu's parade. After that, I'll be ready to die.

When this ugly gangster told Joe Glaser that he must take the name of Armstrong down, off of the marquee, and it was an 'order from Al Capone,' Mr. Glaser looked this cat straight in the face and told him these words: 'I think that Louis Armstrong is the world's greatest, and this is my place, and I defy anybody to take his name down from there.'

Music is life itself. What would this world be without good music? No matter what kind it is.

'Cat?' 'Cat' can be anybody from the guy in the gutter to a lawyer, doctor, the biggest man to the lowest man, but if he's in there with a good heart and enjoy the same music together, he's a cat.

Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.

When I play, maybe 'Back o' Town Blues,' I'm thinking about one of the old, low-down moments - when maybe your woman didn't treat you right. That's a hell of a moment when a woman tell you, 'I got another mule in my stall.'

We never did try to get together and to show the younger Negroes such as myself, to try and even to show that he has ambitions - and with just a little encouragement, I could have really done something worthwhile. But instead, we did nothing but let the young upstarts know that they were young and simple, and that was that.

The first time I heard Jack Teagarden on the trombone, I had goose pimples all over.

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

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

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

It makes you feel good, man, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker, it makes you feel a special kinship.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.

I never want to be anything more than I am; what I don't have, I don't need.

When the other kids started calling me nicknames, I knew everything was all right. I have a pretty big mouth, so they hit on that and began calling me Gatemouth or Satchelmouth, and that Satchelmouth has stuck to me all my life, except that now it's been made into 'Satchmo' - 'Satchmo' Armstrong.

There is no such thing as 'on the way out' as long as you are still doing something interesting and good; you're in the business because you're breathing.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

All music is folk music, I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.

Jazz is what I play for a living.

If you still have to ask, shame on you.

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

If you gotta ask, you'll never know.

At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the "mis-de" and you just got meaner and meaner..

The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.