Quotes from Albert Murray

American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless of all the hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise, incontestably mulatto. Indeed, for all their traditional antagonisms and obvious differences, the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other.

Indeed, for all their traditional antagonisms and obvious differences, the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other.

American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite …the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other.

In the context of a national dialogue, perhaps the only authorization required for "putting in your little two cents worth" is the constitutional provision for free speech. Moreover, the basis for the presumptions of dissent and counter-statement is the same as for popping off: the merest hint or suspicion that outrage is being committed against one's conception of actuality.

For my wife, Mozelle, who, honeysuckle-fairytale downhome girl that she is, was, as the old folks used to say, born knowing.

Nor was his point that the meek shall inherit the earth. His point was that no man could inherit the earth, that the only thing worth inheriting is humanity.

Ethnic differences are the very essence of cultural diversity and national creativity.

the present domestic conflict and upheaval grows out of the fact that in spite of their common destiny and deeper interests, the people of the United States are being misled by misinformation to insist on exaggerating their ethnic differences

a major charge of the argument advanced here is that most social science survey findings are not scientific enough. They violate one's common everyday breeze-tasting sense of life precisely because they do not meet the standards of validity, reliability, and comprehensiveness that the best scientists have always insisted on

administration involvement with the moral clichés of internationalism (derived from liberal and radical ideas of the nineteen thirties) is probably as great a source of current confusion as anything else

The juke joint, the honky tonk, and the ballroom also represent one more thing, anthropologically speaking: a ceremonial context for the male-with-female-duet dance flirtation and embrace, upon which the zoological survival of the human species has always been predicated.

The United States is not a nation of black and white people. Any fool can see that white people are not really white, and that black people are not black.

The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.

Now, one can often get away with playing music by ear when it is not being recorded, but writing is another matter; its mistakes are not forgotten because they are still there to confuse us.

The improvisational nature of jazz musicianship is such that a truly competent performer must be prepared to function as an on-the-spot composer who is expected to contribute to the orchestration in progress, not simply to execute the score as it is written and rehearsed.

A jazz tune, melody, or composition is usually based on either a traditional twelve-bar, eight-bar, or four-bar blues chorus or on the thirty-two-bar chorus of the American popular song.

When the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines the mission of the poet, the priest and the medicine man.

Effective stream-of-consciousness narration is the product of verbal precision, not just of literal documentation. It is decidedly not a matter of unedited free-association.

Jazz music, as is also the case with the old down-home spirituals, gospel and jubilee songs, jumps, shouts and moans, is essentially an American vernacular or idiomatic modification of musical conventions imported from Europe, beginning back during the time of the early settlers of the original colonies.

As any competent student of literary composition knows, the more natural and casual a voice sounds in print, the more likely it is to have been edited time and again.

If it is properly done, the 'as told to' autobiography represents how the subject wants his story told.

I am not an African. I am an American.