“Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not goin...”

“There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks and there's the way I like to play which is dangerously where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create someth...”

“Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.”

“Many people don't understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz... And that is really the idea of democracy - freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don't just get out there an...”

“Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.”

“In an era of globalization, people recognize that they are part of a global society, but they have no idea how to make such a society work. So far, no unified vision or leadership has emerged to gu...”

“Everybody should be equal in a democracy - that is the nature of a democracy.”

“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words ...”

“A disciplined mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering.”

“We love surfers for the same reasons we have always admired doctors and pilots and firemen and shamans, for the same reasons we admire excellent soldiers: because despite themselves they have bowed...”

“Passion is a Horse Given to Us to Discipline.”

“There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. ”

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.”

“Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.”