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Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow.

Jon Gordon

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Jon Gordon
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: January 20
Businessperson
Consultant
Writer
Today
Optimism
Determine
Level
Tomorrow
Levels
Success

More quotes by Jon Gordon

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Life and success are about what you choose to believe.
Jon Gordon
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I had made a couple of records in Europe. One as a leader, and one as a sideman before that. It was what it was. I started to work with Maria Schneider around that period and some other people, I started to get called to sub at the Vanguard in my mid-20s.
Jon Gordon
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I would sit in at a jazz brunch [at sweet Basil] with Eddie Chamblee, who was a great tenor player. Really a kind man. The whole band was great.
Jon Gordon
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Aesthetically, I love the whole history of the music.
Jon Gordon
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Many of the people I'm gratified to see have gotten acclaim like Mark Turner or Bill Charlap. Ed Simon or Maria Schneider or Jim McNeely or Scott Robinson. Ken Peplowski, who is a friend and somebody I admire a lot.
Jon Gordon
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When I heard Charlie Parker the first time on a record, it had seemed like an old, scratchy kind of record and I didn't get it.
Jon Gordon
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Sometimes you think Okay, well I'm going to play my horn, and I'm going to study Charlie Bird Parker solos or [John Coltrain] or whatever. But as [Phil Wood] said to me, Man, Bird listened to everything.
Jon Gordon
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Only through service and sacrifice can you become great.
Jon Gordon
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A guy like Scott [Robinson] plays the whole history of music on every instrument you've ever heard of. He's just kind of an unparalleled genius.
Jon Gordon
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You fuel your life with trust and love instead of fear and doubt.
Jon Gordon
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Great leaders don't succeed because they are great. They succeed because they bring out the greatness in others.
Jon Gordon
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The goal is not to be better than anyone else but rather be better than you were yesterday.
Jon Gordon
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I had pestered [Phil Wood] for a long time. He finally agreed to do it. And I was excited and nervous and he couldn't have been nicer or more supportive from the minute I got to his house.
Jon Gordon
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[Manhattan School Of Music] didn't' have a jazz undergraduate program at the time so I played a semester in the big band. There was a graduate program. But I wasn't really that involved in jazz yet.
Jon Gordon
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Phil [Wood] said to me in the car going back, he said, Look man, you better know why you're playing this music. Because I've known too many who lived and died for it. And if you're not trying to change the world, I'm not interested.
Jon Gordon
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Pretty fortunate that with the exception of two months when I was 23, that I worked in a law office pushing paper around. I was always able to eke out a living somehow. So I'm blessed.
Jon Gordon
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A lot of musicians have said things to me like, Music saved my life. And I'm standing on the shoulders of dozens of people that you've never heard of that were like angels for me that came out of the woodwork. And that's really the case for me. I had so many people that did those kinds of things for me.
Jon Gordon
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I feel very similarly. I didn't have necessarily the same exact kind of dynamic, but that means a lot when people are like that with you. Especially people like that. And I think [Phil Wood] felt a certain responsibility .
Jon Gordon
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Phil [Wood] was known for having a little bit of a gruff manner, but he was all heart.
Jon Gordon
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I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had a number of classes with him.
Jon Gordon