Top 50 Louis Armstrong Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah...”

— Louis Armstrong

Featured in: Music Quotes, Cheer Quotes, Cute Quotes, Contentment Quotes, Joy Quotes

2. “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

3. “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

4. “Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.”

— Louis Armstrong

5. “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

6. “Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of like half-fast.”

— Louis Armstrong

7. “The best I can do is stay happy.”

— Louis Armstrong

8. “A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original.”

— Louis Armstrong

9. “To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!”

— Louis Armstrong

10. “Never play a thing the same way twice.”

— Louis Armstrong

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

— Louis Armstrong

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

— 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. “It ain’t whatcha say, it’s the way howcha say it.”

— Louis Armstrong

15. “Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him.”

— Louis Armstrong

16. “You got to love to be able to play.”

— Louis Armstrong

17. “If you don’t understand it, don’t mess with it.”

— Louis Armstrong

18. “I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.”

— Louis Armstrong

19. “All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.”

— Louis Armstrong

20. “Jazz is what I play for a living.”

— Louis Armstrong

21. “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

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

— Louis Armstrong

23. “My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.”

— Louis Armstrong

24. “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

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

— Louis Armstrong

26. “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

27. “There’s some folks, that, if they don’t know, you can’t tell ’em.”

— Louis Armstrong

28. “We don’t play slow and we don’t play fast, we play half fast.”

— Louis Armstrong

Featured in: Guitar Quotes

29. “If you still have to ask, shame on you.”

— Louis Armstrong

30. “You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.”

— Louis Armstrong

31. “If it hadn’t been for Jazz, there wouldn’t be no rock and roll.”

— Louis Armstrong

32. “I’m a spade, you’re an ofay. Let’s play.”

— Louis Armstrong

33. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell!”

— 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. “Unless you know what it is I ain’t never going to be able to explain it to you.”

— Louis Armstrong

36. “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

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

— Louis Armstrong

38. “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

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

39. “The Bright Blessed Day, the Dark Sacred Night.”

— Louis Armstrong

40. “I don’t get involved in politics. I just blow my horn.”

— Louis Armstrong

41. “What we play is life.”

— Louis Armstrong

42. “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

43. “Red beans and ricely yours.”

— Louis Armstrong

44. “When you’re dead, you’re done.”

— Louis Armstrong

45. “You’ve got to be good or as bad as the devil.”

— Louis Armstrong

46. “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

47. “Love is talkative passion.”

— Louis Armstrong

48. “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

49. “Music is either good or bad, and it’s got to be learned. You got to have balance.”

— Louis Armstrong

50. “White folks still in the lead.”

— Louis Armstrong