133 Quotes by Duke Ellington

There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!

You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it's bad.

Love is indescribable and unconditional. I could tell you a thousand things that it is not, but not one that it is. Either you have it or you haven't; there's no proof of it.

Simplicity is a most complex form

My mother told me I was blessed, and I have always taken her word for it. Being born of - or reincarnated from - royalty is nothing Like being blessed. Royalty is inherited from another human being; blessedness comes from God.

The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.

Everybody in Canada seemed to listen to what they enjoyed, and nobody could tell them what to like, or what was the popular, or what was the In thing. Even today, it is very hard to brainwash a Canadian.

There are 2 rules in life: Number 1- Never quit Number2- Never forget rule number 1.

Everyone prays in their own language, and there is no language that God does not understand.