1- “We don’t play slow and we don’t play fast, we play half fast.” -Louis Armstrong
2- “When I go to the Gate, I’ll play a duet with Gabriel. Yeah, we’ll play ‘Sleepy Time Down South’ and ‘Hello, Dolly!.’ Then he can blow a couple that he’s been playing up there all the time.” -Louis Armstrong
3- “If you still have to ask, shame on you.” -Louis Armstrong
4- “It’s America’s classical music… this becomes our tradition… the bottom line of any country in the world is what did we contribute to the world?… we contributed Louis Armstrong.” -Louis Armstrong
5- “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.” -Louis Armstrong
6- “All them weird chords which don’t mean a thing…you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to.” -Louis Armstrong
7- “You’ve got to be good or as bad as the devil.” -Louis Armstrong
8- “You can’t take it for granted. Even if we have two, three days off I still have to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops. I mean I’ve been playing 50 years, and that’s what I’ve been doing in order to keep in that groove there.” -Louis Armstrong
9- “If ya ain’t got it in ya, ya can’t blow it out.” -Louis Armstrong
10- “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell!” -Louis Armstrong
11- “There are Two Secrets to Success: 1. Don’t tell ANYONE Everything you know 2.If you have to ask what Jazz is, you’ll never know.” -Louis Armstrong
12- “It ain’t whatcha say, it’s the way howcha say it.” -Louis Armstrong
13- “Making money ain’t nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you’re just as graveyard dead as he is.” -Louis Armstrong
14- “I’m a spade, you’re an ofay. Let’s play.” -Louis Armstrong
15- “If it hadn’t been for Jazz, there wouldn’t be no rock and roll.” -Louis Armstrong
16- “You either have it or you don’t. You play your horn just like you sing a song or a hymn. If it’s in your heart, you express yourself in the tune.” -Louis Armstrong
17- “I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.” -Louis Armstrong
18- “Music is either good or bad, and it’s got to be learned. You got to have balance.” -Louis Armstrong
19- “Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.” -Louis Armstrong
20- “I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.” -Louis Armstrong
21- “A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.” -Louis Armstrong
22- “I don’t get involved in politics. I just blow my horn.” -Louis Armstrong
23- “The best I can do is stay happy.” -Louis Armstrong
24- “I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and you. And I think to myself what a wonderful world. I see skies of blue and clouds of white. The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. And I think to myself what a wonderful world.” -Louis Armstrong
25- “It really puzzles me to see marijuana connected with narcotics dope and all of that stuff. It is a thousand times better than whiskey. It is an assistant and a friend.” -Louis Armstrong
26- “As a youngster in the little orphanage home in New Orleans, I was the bugler of the institution. When I got to be around 13 or 14 years old, they took me off the bugle and put me in the little brass band.” -Louis Armstrong
27- “To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!” -Louis Armstrong
28- “Love is talkative passion.” -Louis Armstrong
29- “And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah.” -Louis Armstrong
30- “When you’re dead, you’re done.” -Louis Armstrong
31- “Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.” -Louis Armstrong
32- “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.” -Louis Armstrong
33- “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.” -Louis Armstrong
34- “Even If I have two three days off, you still have to blow that horn. You have to keep up those chops… I have to warm up everyday for at least an hour.” -Louis Armstrong
35- “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” -Louis Armstrong
36- “At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the “mis-de” and you just got meaner and meaner.” -Louis Armstrong
37- “When I was young and very green, I worte that tune, Sister Kate, and someone said that’s fine, let me publish it for you. I’ll give you fifty dollars. I didn’t know nothing about papers, and business, and I sold it outright.” -Louis Armstrong
38- “If you don’t understand it, don’t mess with it.” -Louis Armstrong
39- “When you’re with another tea smoker it makes you feel a special kinship.” -Louis Armstrong
40- “Never play anything the same way twice.” -Louis Armstrong
41- “I had a chance to play with the best musicians that were coming through because I was pretty good myself or else they wouldn’t have tolerated with me.” -Louis Armstrong
42- “My life has always been my music, it’s always come first, but the music ain’t worth nothing if you can’t lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, ’cause what you’re there for is to please the people.” -Louis Armstrong
43- “Red beans and ricely yours.” -Louis Armstrong
44- “You blows who you is.” -Louis Armstrong
44- “White folks still in the lead.” -Louis Armstrong
46- 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.” -Louis Armstrong
47- “I’ve Got the World on a String.” -Louis Armstrong
48- “All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.” -Louis Armstrong
49- “It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country.” -Louis Armstrong
50- “You got to love to be able to play” -Louis Armstrong
51- “Unless you know what it is I ain’t never going to be able to explain it to you.” -Louis Armstrong
52- “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.” -Louis Armstrong
53- “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.” -Louis Armstrong
54- “Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans. When that’s where you left your heart. The moonlight on the bayou a creole tune that fills the air. I dream about magnolias in bloom and I’m wishin’ I was there.” -Louis Armstrong
55- “You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.” -Louis Armstrong
56- “Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of like half-fast.” -Louis Armstrong
57- “Jazz is what I play for a living.” -Louis Armstrong
58- “Never play a thing the same way twice.” -Louis Armstrong
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