Motivational Quotes

Music

The history of a people is found in its songs.

- Jellinek, George

Best Quotes about Music

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

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

Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.

Kin Hubbard

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

George Eliot

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

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

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

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

Zappa, Frank

A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.

Carey, Mariah

10.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

John Erskine

11.

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

Dietz, Howard

12.

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

George Santayana

13.

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

Luther, Martin

14.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

15.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Miller, Henry

16.

Music is a readily available, highly effective tool that you use to improve both your cognitive and physical abilities.

Winter, Arthur

17.

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

18.

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

Rattle, Simon

19.

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

Mencken, H. L.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Dan Rather

23.

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

24.

[T]here's no bad day that can't be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet; this is just truth, plain and simple.

Chuck Sigars

25.

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

Brown, James

26.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

Johnson, James Weldon

27.

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it in front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

Taylor, James

28.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

29.

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Cocteau, Jean

30.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

31.

Music was invented to confirm human loneliness.

Durrell, Lawrence

32.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

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.

Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!

J. K. Rowling

35.

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.

36.

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

Lennon, John

37.

Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy.

Jean Baptiste Montegut

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first.

Billings, Josh

41.

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

Cosby, Bill

42.

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

43.

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

Green, Benny

44.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

I think my fans will follow me into our combined old age. Real musicians and real fans stay together for a long, long time.

Raitt, Bonnie

46.

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