American Quotes

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

To be able to be caught up into the world of thought - that is being educated.

We incorporate various electronic devices - the echo plugs and things like that. Actually, all we're trying to do is make that sound musical. As opposed to just making sounds, we do musical things with them.

The type of band that I have now, the type of music that we're playing you either like it or you dislike it. If you dislike it, you probably don't know why. By the same token, you can't even really say why you like it.

Personally, I can't see how anyone can produce any beautiful music out of being angry.

My roots and Victor's are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they're tremendously exciting players.

Mentally and physically, I find I can play with these people.

Luckily, I'm in the position now of being able to play purely because I have the desire to do so.

In fact, I had to make an enormous adjustment to this, not only in listening to it but in playing with it. It's a full sound. In some instances, you must have the volume to get the effect.

I've been a little more fortunate, perhaps, than a lot of people have, for the simple reason that I've constantly been moving: so nobody can hit me - you know what I mean? Protesting is not the answer - not along those lines.

I mean, there's a hell of a lot of grounds for protest, but you don't do it through music.

I have a company in New York City producing music for commercials, for radio, TV, features, etc. That's how I've been making my living. And now the company is very successful - to the extent that I can afford to come out and play.

I don't dig staying in one groove.

For the last five years I've been in the production business.

But you can't extend, or go beyond any point musically, without the basic fundamentals.

At this stage of my life, I've dedicated myself to playing what I want to play, how I want to play it for the rest of my time. Regardless of whether one might like it or one might not like it, this is where I am.

And I'm happy to say that I'm able to find people wherever I go that are not black, not white - they're just human beings. That's where I am, where I've been and where I intend to stay.

A lot of musicians aren't proud; they'll do other work, just to be able to play music. I guess that's the way it's always going to be - musicians will have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet.

I'm quite sure that all true professional artists, of every description, in all walks of life, whether their craft is painting, music, sculpture, medicine or anything, have one primary concern - mankind.

When employers tell me they prefer married men, and encourage their men to have homes of their own, because it makes them so much steadier, I wonder if they have any idea of all that that implies.

There can be no intelligent control of the lead danger in industry unless it is based on the principle of keeping the air clear from dust and fumes.

No young doctor nowadays can hope for work as exciting and rewarding.

It was impossible for me to believe that conditions in Europe could be worse than they were in the Polish section of Chicago, and in many Italian and Irish tenements, or that any workshops could be worse than some of those I had seen in our foreign quarters.

It was easy to present figures demonstrating the contrast between lead work in the United States under conditions of neglect and ignorance, and comparable work in England and Germany, under intelligent control.

It was also my experience at Hull-House that aroused my interest in industrial diseases.

Illinois then had no legislation providing compensation for accident or disease caused by occupation.

From the first I became convinced that what I must look for was lead dust and lead fumes, that men were poisoned by breathing poisoned air, not by handling their food with unwashed hands.

Every article I wrote in those days, every speech I made, is full of pleading for the recognition of lead poisoning as a real and serious medical problem.

When I talked to my medical friends about the strange silence on this subject in American medical magazines and textbooks, I gained the impression that here was a subject tainted with Socialism or with feminine sentimentality for the poor.

Everything I discovered was new and most of it was really valuable.