Motivational Quotes

Music

All my concerts had no sounds in them; they were completely silent. People had to make up their own music in their minds!

- Yoko Ono

Best Quotes about Music

I hate music, especially when it's played.

Jimmy Durante

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

There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it.

Wood, Ron

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

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

Gibbons, Billy

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

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

Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent

Hugo, Victor

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

10.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

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

Dietz, Howard

12.

Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it.

Gallagher, Liam

13.

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

Johnson, James Weldon

14.

Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

William Shakespeare

15.

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

George Santayana

16.

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

Plato

17.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

18.

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

19.

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

Addison, Joseph

20.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

21.

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

22.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.

Holly, Buddy

26.

Words are poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. When all words end, music begins; when they suggest, it realizes; and hence is the secret of its strange, inexpressible power.

Haweis, H. R.

27.

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

28.

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

Miller, Henry

29.

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics.

Mascagni, Pietro

30.

One is hardly sensible of fatigue while he marches to music.

Carlyle, Thomas

31.

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

Beerbohm, Sir Max

32.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

33.

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

Martin Luther

34.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Stravinsky, Igor

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Sir Thomas Beecham

39.

Music is the key to the female heart.

Seume, Johann G.

40.

[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

41.

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

G. K. Chesterton

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Woody Allen

45.

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

Luther, Martin

46.

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

J. K. Rowling

47.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.