Motivational Quotes

Music

Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key to their progress.

- Levi-Strauss, Claude

Best Quotes about Music

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

Sousa, John Philip

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

Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

I've always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

Franklin, Aretha

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

Keats, John

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

Song is the heroics of speech.

Carlyle, Thomas

Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

Morrison, Van

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

10.

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

11.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

12.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

13.

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

14.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

15.

There is two kinds of music the good and bad. I play the good kind.

Armstrong, Louis

16.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

17.

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

18.

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

19.

[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

20.

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

Beerbohm, Sir Max

21.

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

22.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

23.

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

Miller, Henry

24.

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

25.

A woman's two cents worth is worth two cents in the music business.

Lynn, Loretta

26.

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

27.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Johnson, Samuel

28.

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

29.

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

Dietz, Howard

30.

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

William Shakespeare

31.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

32.

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

Brown, James

33.

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

George Bernard Shaw

34.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

35.

We are aware that the conductor is not really making the music, it is making him -- if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

Brook, Peter (Stephen Paul)

36.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

37.

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

Wilson, Colin

38.

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

39.

Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.

Martin Luther

40.

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

Plutarch

41.

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

Green, Benny

42.

The history of a people is found in its songs.

Jellinek, George

43.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Robert Fripp

44.

You are the music while the music lasts.

Eliot, T. S.

45.

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

Johnson, Samuel

46.

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

Billings, Josh

47.

If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!

William Shakespeare

48.

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

Pierre Beaumarchais

49.

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

50.

Rock 'n Roll is an asylum for emotional idiots.

Neville, Richard