Louis Armstrong Quotes

I do believe that my whole success goes back to that time I was arrested as a wayward boy at the age of thirteen. Because then I had to quit running around and began to learn something. Most of all, I began to learn music.

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

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

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

Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.

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

If ya ain’t got it in ya, ya can’t blow it out.

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

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

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

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

Well, I tell you… the first chorus, I plays the melody. The second chorus, I plays the melody round the melody, and the third chorus, I routines.

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.

I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.

‘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.

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

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.