Top 72 Louis Armstrong Quotes
#3. I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right - shame on you.
Louis Armstrong
#4. It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country.
Louis Armstrong
#5. As many bands as you heard [in New Orleans], that's how many bands you heard playing right. I thought I was in Heaven playing second trumpet in the Tuxedo Brass Band
and they had some funeral marches that would just touch your heart, they were so beautiful.
Louis Armstrong
#6. There's some folks, that, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Louis Armstrong
#7. 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
#9. There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.
Louis Armstrong
#10. 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
#11. Seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby - love. That's the secret.
Louis Armstrong
#12. A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.
Louis Armstrong
#14. If you have to ask what jazz is you will never know. Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
#17. 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
#18. Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.
Louis Armstrong
#19. You see, pops, that's the kind of talk that's ruining the music. Everyone's trying to do something new, no one trying to learn the fundamentals first. All them young cats playing their wierd chords. And what happens? No one's working.
Louis Armstrong
#20. Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine, I look right into the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.
Louis Armstrong
#21. Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.
Louis Armstrong
#22. 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
#24. We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.
Louis Armstrong
#27. All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.
Louis Armstrong
#29. 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
#30. There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.
Louis Armstrong
#31. 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
#32. All them weird chords which don't mean a thing ... you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to
Louis Armstrong
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the "mis-de" and you just got meaner and meaner..
Louis Armstrong
#37. 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
#39. 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
#40. My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.
Louis Armstrong
#41. We don't play slow and we don't play fast, we play half fast
Louis Armstrong
#42. 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
#44. 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
#45. If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll.
Louis Armstrong
#46. Don't do nothing halfway, else you find yourself dropping more than can be picked up.
Louis Armstrong
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#51. I don't let my mouth say nothin' my head can't stand ...
Louis Armstrong
#54. Man, if you have to ask what it [jazz] is, you'll never know.
Louis Armstrong
#58. Music is either good or bad, and it's got to be learned. You got to have balance.
Louis Armstrong
#59. 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
#60. Unless you know what it is I ain't never going to be able to explain it to you.
Louis Armstrong
#61. 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
#63. I don't get involved in politics. I just blow my horn.
Louis Armstrong
#66. 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
#67. You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.
Louis Armstrong
#69. 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.
Louis Armstrong
#70. The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell!
Louis Armstrong
#72. We all go Do, Re, Mi, but you've gotta find all the other notes yourself.
Louis Armstrong
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