Dr. John Quotations

When I was a little bitty kid, my aunt showed me how to play a little boogie. It took me years. I had to play the left-hand part with two hands, because my hands was so little. Then as I grew up and I learned how to play the left-hand part with one hand, she showed me how to play the right-hand part, and et cetera. My Uncle Joe showed me how to play a little bit different boogie stuff. I had people in my family that was professional musicians, but I just wasn't interested in what they did. I wasn't very open-minded to a lot of music that I'd be more open to today.

The Nuclear Industry is conducting a war against humanity.

My mom was beautiful; she was supposed to be the original Jane in the original Tarzan movie. They asked her to put her foot in the water and there was an alligator in there, and she wouldn't put her foot in the water.

In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of the little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar.

See, I dont know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.

Marvin Gaye was a killer drummer. I think he just played during the soundchecks and he'd have another guy sing his parts while he played the drums. He just wanted to play the drums and have some fun.

I always seemed to be in the right place at the wrong time.

I think that any of the places that's cut off from money, things come up, what the people have to rely on.

Corruption at every level, city, state, federal, all has helped in making New Orleans a disaster area, the most disappearing land mass on the planet Earth.

Everybody in my neighborhood in the '40s, they played pianos. That's how people partied. They didn't try the TV, the radio was OK, records was cool, but when people wanted to party, they got around a piano. My mother played piano, my sister played. I've been around a lot of piano all my life.

The specter of color is apparent even when it goes unmentioned, and it is all too often the unseen force that influences public policy as well as private relationships. There is nothing more remarkable than the ingenuity that the various demarcations of the color line reflect. If only the same creative energy could be used to eradicate the color line; then its days would indeed be numbered.

Stress is the inability to adapt to a changing environment.

Powerful people never educate powerless people in what they need that they can use to take the power away from powerful people; it's too much to expect. If I was in power, I would not educate people in how to take my powers away.

Doc has been my name all my life, and John is my middle name. I'm proud of all my names - Malcolm John Michael Creaux Rebennack. I'm proud of them names.

In the network's mind there are no limits.

We all, if we go with ego I go or you go ego thing, it's got to be free from all of that and just roll, because music is a spiritual thing. It's got to come through us and can't just hit us. It's got to be part of us that comes through us and goes to the people, and then they come back to us and give us more spirit.

I started out with the guitar and was a studio musician back in the 50s, and then got shot in my finger.

I been trying to clean up my act with my children for a long time. And I pretty much got them all talking to me now. And they accept me as a humanoid again.

When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me.

I've been thinking a lot lately about taking chances, and how it's really just about overcoming your fears. Because the truth is, everytime you take a big risk in your life, no matter how it ends up, you're always glad you took it.

If we don't be going strong, we're going weak, and we can't afford to go weak. We've got too many problems to do that.

I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul.

You wanna do some livin' before you die. Do it down in New Orleans...

When the voice and the vision on the inside is more profound, and more clear and loud than all opinions on the outside, you've begun to master your life.

The events which transpired five thousand years ago; Five years ago or five minutes ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now; five years From now or five thousand years from now. All history is a current event.

See, I don't know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.