Motivational Quotes

Music

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.

- Dan Rather

Best Quotes about Music

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

Ed Gardner

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes --ah, that is where the art resides.

Schnabel, Artur

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Plato

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

I like Beethoven, especially the poems.

Starr, Ringo

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Camus, Albert

A musicologist is a man who can read music but cannot hear it.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

10.

She was one of those people who said I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like.

Beerbohm, Sir Max

11.

They said, You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.

Stevens, Wallace

12.

It was called the Backstreet Market, and it was just like a local hangout. That was where the kids would drive their cars, hang out with their convertibles and listen to music. That's how we got Backstreet. We put Boys on it, because no matter how old we get, we'll always be boys.

Richardson, Kevin

13.

Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently.

Huneker, James G.

14.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

15.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

16.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

Thoreau, Henry David

17.

Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.

Cervantes, Miguel De

18.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

19.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

20.

Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor.

Luther, Martin

21.

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

Sousa, John Philip

22.

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

Mann, Thomas

23.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Einstein, Albert

24.

The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.

Virgil Thomson

25.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

Thomas, Lewis

26.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

27.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard

28.

When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan's Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms. This ever-increasing assault of sound upon our ears, minds, and bodies adds to the stress load of civilized beings trying to live in a highly complex environment.

Halpern, Steven

29.

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

Tate, Jeffrey

30.

To know the cause why music was ordain'd! Was it not to refresh the mind of a man after his studies or his usual pain?

William Shakespeare

31.

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

Woody Allen

32.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.

Stravinsky, Igor

33.

But then there's a moment like tonight, a profound and transcendent experience, the feeling as if a door has opened, and it's all because of that instrument, that incredible, magical instrument.

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

34.

Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

35.

If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.

Proverb, Zimbabwe

36.

The manner in which Americans consume music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

Zappa, Frank

37.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

38.

I resent performing for frisking idiots who don't know anything.

Lennon, John

39.

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Carlyle, Thomas

40.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony.

Britten, Benjamin

41.

I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.

Brown, James

42.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

43.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Johnson, Samuel

44.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

45.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

46.

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

John Cage

47.

If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn't have to go to an osteopath, then there's something wrong.

Rattle, Simon

48.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

49.

It's a marvelous feeling when someone says I want to do this song of yours because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after.

Carpenter, Mary Chapin

50.

Today, music heralds... the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.