Top 70 Armstrong Quotes

I can play the trumpet. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. I started young and got to grade seven. When I turned 13, everyone started whipping out guitars, looking cool and joining rock bands, so I stopped playing.

I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot – which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong’s landing, I was at university rehearsing a play.

When I moved to Cleveland, defense research was laying the foundations for the Internet. The Apollo program was just about to put a man on the moon – and it was Neil Armstrong, from right here in Ohio. The future felt limitless. But today, our government is broken.

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

I always respected Neil Armstrong highly. He was probably the coolest under pressure of anyone I ever had the privilege of flying with. I never saw him flustered.

Do you think Duke Ellington didn’t listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn’t influenced by European music!

It’s a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.

Lance Armstrong won seven Tours, that’s 147 days of racing, and he never had a puncture or a mechanical. You can really minimise your chances of a mistake if you do everything right.

Is there one blues guy who was the most sophisticated and influential, like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong in jazz? Was it Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, or all of them? I think you have to pick all of them.

I suppose I am Scottish – Armstrong. They were thugs, basically, reivers – and I bet they were ravers, too. They lived in what was known as the Debatable Lands, so it didn’t have any allegiance to either the English or the Scottish crown.

I’m probably the only one in the world you can name that’s worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. I’m the only one.

I think I was drawn to black culture by the same things that have been drawing the entire world to it since the days of Richard Wright, Josephine Baker and Louis Armstrong. This culture is original, potent and seductive.

Growing up in San Diego, my main interests were the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, ‘Star Wars,’ baseball cards, and drawing.

I realized I was never going to be Lance Armstrong. And in biking, if you want to make money, you have to be the best.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

The New York that Frank Sinatra sang about, people will never know that place. The New Orleans that Louis Armstrong sang about is the New Orleans that’s still there – it’s preserved.

I saw Louis Armstrong perform at Albany State College on Radio Springs Road. He was probably the first famous individual I saw in concert. Unfortunately, I never did get to meet him.

I feel very privileged to have worked with a lot of outstanding actors: Alun Armstrong, Peter Mullan, Matt Smith and Andrew Garfield.

New Yorkers know how to borrow wildly. You know, Louis Armstrong was not a New York musician. He went from New Orleans to Chicago to New York, and when he arrived here, he taught those New Yorkers. New York needs that infusion.

My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.

Neil Armstrong, when he was out there landing on the moon, I was there first.

Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ is my ultimate karaoke song. It is a wonderful world. People forget we only have a certain amount of time, and it can all end at any moment. Armstrong and Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ are the ultimate one-two punch.

I was a fan of Lance Armstrong, and I remember watching him win the Worlds in ’93 in Oslo.

I went on a Buddha jag. I read ‘Confession of a Buddhist Atheist‘ by Stephen Batchelor and Karen Armstrong’s biography of Buddha, which is a great book.

As far as music, Louis Armstrong is one of my heroes.

You’ve got different people that have different views of New Orleans. When you say ‘New Orleans,’ you have people who just think of the Neville Brothers. You’ve got people that think of Louis Armstrong. You say ‘New Orleans,’ and you’ve got people that think of Lil’ Wayne.

Tim Armstrong is a good friend.

I’m no Lance Armstrong, but I do use a bike to get from place to place in Manhattan, a little bit of Brooklyn.

My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong.

If you look at anyone who has achieved great success and wealth, people like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, or Lance Armstrong, they have all focused intensely in order to win.

I was watching a black and white television in Cairo, MI., at my grandparents‘ house, and I watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon. At that point, it set the bit for me to be an astronaut, and it was kind of like a dream, but it really wasn’t reality.

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

Coinbase is ‘the’ brand in the Bitcoin space. Their founder Brian Armstrong was amongst the first good entrepreneurs to emerge in this space. While others championed ideological or underground/illicit interests, Brian saw an opportunity to change the world for the better and build a big business out of it.

Louis Armstrong, who learned to be in exquisite dress, came from the bottom, and he’s not a trash can.

Few of us boggle – though we should – at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with similar panache, or that Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten were equally adept as composers, conductors and pianists.

If people see me giving back to the military, they’ll hopefully follow suit and be good to these guys who have done so much. I’m not Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods – I’m just an old, gray-beard mountain climber, but I’m hoping to inspire people to follow my way.

I was in the Oval Office when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon because I was called in to coordinate the coverage. I got to thinking, ‘We have a feed from the moon. We’ve got a feed from the Earth. I can set up the first interplanetary shot in history.’

The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out. There was a while where I thought you could try.

There’s a steady forward march of a creative process that some of us stay with and don’t give up – that should be an admirable thing – from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to Miles to Ornette and some people who are not even known today – some kids coming up – people who are out to change the world.

I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.

I just went to Harvard a little while, because I graduated from Armstrong High School in Washington and then I went up there but I didn’t stay that long because I went into show business.

I didn’t grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it’s not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.

Everyone should take their hats off to Neil Armstrong. He is a humble guy who doesn’t wave his own flag.

English banjo players really were a law unto themselves – you don’t find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records.

I was living in New York. Sometimes, our gang of musicians would go to Louis Armstrong’s home and play records. It was a lesson, like going to school at night. Ella Fitzgerald was an inspiration, too, a unique artist. When you had an opportunity to be with people like them, you cherished it.

Admittedly, it would take industrial-grade chutzpah and a massive dose of malevolence for anyone to bulldoze the spot where Neil Armstrong stepped off the Eagle lander. But even innocent visits could be damaging.

Everything being equal, no sickness or crashes, there’s nobody who can beat Lance Armstrong at the Tour de France.

I’m really a product of an excellent school system and supportive parents. My high school band director gave me recordings of Louis Armstrong, Kenny Ball, and contemporaries like Nicholas Payton.

I was treated with a miracle drug, just like Lance Armstrong.

Something I’ll always remember – when I was a kid, I shook hands with Orville Wright. Forty years later, I shook hands with Neil Armstrong. The guy that invented the airplane and the guy that walked on the moon. In a lifetime, that’s kinda wild when you think about it.

Lance Armstrong did a number of things, and he gave himself cancer.

Neil Armstrong was probably one of the most human guys I’ve ever known in my life.

Scott Armstrong got me my tryout at the WWE Performance Center. I went there and got my tryout and it was one of the most physically trying things in my life.

I do a very good impression of Louis Armstrong.

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day always says we were influences on him, because he does melodic but distorted, like what we were doing. The Ramones were doing it. We were doing it. The Buzzcocks, all those bands.

The clarinet is not so dominant in Israeli music as it is in klezmer. I heard klezmer when I was growing up, but for some reason I avoided it. I listened to Louis Armstrong instead. But the sense of melody is the connection between jazz and klezmer.

Another inspiration that has helped me get through has been Lance Armstrong’s story. My cancer is not nearly as bad as his, but I believe in staying motivated and keeping as fit as you can.

Lance Armstrong is the guy that I would put up there as one of my heroes. He’s done something that no one else has done and when you put into it what he overcame, it’s absolutely unbelievable.

When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I’m doing now, that’s a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.

When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon for the first time and said the famous words, ‘That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind,’ he was talking about all of us. Men and women.

If you’re curious how Lance Armstrong got away with cheating for 15 years or why Manti Te’o’s fake girlfriend went unnoticed for five months, it’s because sports reporters are really just starstruck fans, not hardcore journalists.

We’re working on New Glenn, which is our orbital vehicle, but we have in our mind‘s eye an even bigger vehicle called New Armstrong.

I have always loved creating and entertaining. It started with music, singing. I grew up in a household filled with music – not pop but old-school stuff, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong.

What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys.

And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that’s what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.

I’ve always loved airplanes and flight. The space program was really important to me as a kid. I still have a photo of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in my living room.

Lance Armstrong has joined the legion of the lost, the great athletes who were barred or exiled for sins admitted or charged or suspected.

I’m not on a mission. I’m not a paragon of health for anybody. I’m not going to run a marathon or model for ‘Men’s Health’ or go on bike rides with Lance Armstrong. I’m not. Trust me.

Almost a quarter of our planet is a single mountain range and we didn’t enter it until after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon. So we went to the moon, played golf up there, before we went to the largest feature on our own planet.

It hadn’t really percolated through my brain that I was going to see real, live TV from the surface of the Moon, and boy, oh, boy, had that Saturn V launch been exciting! And then, there it was – late at night, sitting up, watching, and there was Neil Armstrong actually standing on the surface of the Moon.