Motivational Quotes

Music

Composers shouldn't think too much -- it interferes with their plagiarism.

- Dietz, Howard

Best Quotes about Music

The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. The motions of his spirit are dull as night, and his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

Shakespeare, William

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

Sousa, John Philip

Music of all the arts has the most influence on the passions and the legislator should give it the greatest encouragement.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. Therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.

Schumann, Robert

Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.

Homer

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

Pavarotti, Luciano

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Davis, Miles

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

10.

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

Woody Allen

11.

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of culture.

Cage, John

12.

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

13.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

Mencken, H. L.

14.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

15.

Composers shouldn't think too much -- it interferes with their plagiarism.

Dietz, Howard

16.

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.

Gibbons, Billy

17.

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

Proverb, Zimbabwe

18.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Green, Benny

19.

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

20.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Gershwin, George

21.

When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind opresses, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress.

William Shakespeare

22.

I think everyone should have a Beatles phase in their life. I think it's part of growing up in the Western world.

Jadelr and Cristina Cordova

23.

I often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.

Nixon, Richard M.

24.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Zappa, Frank

25.

Brass bands are all very well in their place - outdoors and several miles away.

Sir Thomas Beecham

26.

I can sing, and speak to him in many sorts of music.

William Shakespeare

27.

If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it.

Pierre Beaumarchais

28.

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

29.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.

Auden, W. H.

30.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

31.

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

George Santayana

32.

I've outdone anyone you can name -- Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

Brown, James

33.

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

34.

There once was a brainy baboon who always breathed down a bassoon for he said, It appears that in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Pound, Ezra

35.

The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

Beecham, Sir Thomas

36.

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

Johnson, Samuel

37.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Diderot, Denis

38.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

George Eliot

39.

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

40.

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

41.

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

Hesse, Hermann

42.

The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.

Steiner, George

43.

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

Huneker, James G.

44.

I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

Sir Edward Appleton

45.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

46.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.