Motivational Quotes

Music

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

Best Quotes about Music

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

Pound, Ezra

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

Wilde, Oscar

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

Plutarch

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

Auden, W. H.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity --where energies flow smoothly in one direction --there will be much doing but no music.

Hoffer, Eric

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Plato

10.

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.

Bacall, Lauren

11.

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

Brown, James

12.

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

13.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

14.

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

15.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

16.

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

17.

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

Zappa, Frank

18.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

19.

Hearing often-times the still, sad music of humanity, nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power to chasten and subdue.

Wordsworth, William

20.

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

Marcus, Greil

21.

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

Wilde, Oscar

22.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking,'Is there a meaning to music?'My answer would be,'Yes.'And'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'My answer to that would be,'No.'

Aaron Copland

23.

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

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.

Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.

Lingerman, Hal A.

26.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

27.

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

28.

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

Addison, Joseph

29.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry

30.

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

Green, Benny

31.

People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven Quartet.

Lutoslawski, Witold

32.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

Martin Luther

34.

Country music is three chords and the truth.

Howard, Harlan

35.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy, Pat

36.

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

37.

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio

38.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

39.

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

40.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

41.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

William Shakespeare

42.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Coward, Noel

43.

I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us.

Luther, Martin

44.

Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra, not choreography to the audience.

Szell, George

45.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

46.

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

47.

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.

Joel, Billy

48.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

G. K. Chesterton

49.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

50.

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

Beecham, Sir Thomas