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

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

Brown, James

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

J. K. Rowling

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

Sousa, John Philip

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

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

Rock 'n Roll is monotony tinged with hysteria.

Packard, Vance

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

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

Kin Hubbard

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

10.

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

Ed Gardner

11.

Music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good or bad to the deaf.

Spinoza, Baruch (Benedict de)

12.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

13.

Canned music is like audible wallpaper.

Cooke, Alistair

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Lynn, Loretta

19.

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

Johnson, James Weldon

20.

I was a veteran before I was a teenager.

Jackson, Michael

21.

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

Lutoslawski, Witold

22.

Today, music heralds... the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.

Attali, Jacques

23.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

24.

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

25.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

George Bernard Shaw

26.

Music causes us to think eloquently.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

28.

You're talking to someone who really understands rock music.

Gore, Tipper

29.

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.

30.

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

Johnson, Samuel

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Martin Luther

34.

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

Tate, Jeffrey

35.

The high note is not the only thing.

Domingo, Placido

36.

To know the cause why music was ordain'd! Was it not to refresh the mind of a man after his studies or his usual pain?

William Shakespeare

37.

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

Wilde, Oscar

38.

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

Beethoven, Ludwig Van

39.

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

40.

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

Zappa, Frank

41.

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

Beecham, Sir Thomas

42.

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

George Santayana

43.

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

44.

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

Dietz, Howard

45.

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes --ah, that is where the art resides.

Schnabel, Artur

46.

Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

Duffecy, James

47.

Music should never be harmless.

Robertson, Robbie

48.

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)

49.

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

50.

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

Giles, Henry