Music Quotes

"Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music"

"Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music"

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Musician

"Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music"

Nina Simone, Musician

"Aesthetically, we were enormously successful. Economically... there was no success. It was all about music of the future and unfortunately it was a band that didn't have any future"

Wayne Kramer

"Cocktail music is accepted as audible wallpaper"

Alistair Cooke, Journalist

"I remember listening to Cube's music when I was like 14 years old, my friends listening to it up in Toronto"

Scott Speedman, Actor

"The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else"

Barry McGuire, Musician

"I'm very flower-like. I love classical music. I go to ballet and I cry. There's nothing so beautiful"

Michael Gambon, Actor

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent"

Victor Hugo, Author

"When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do"

Jimi Hendrix, Musician

"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music"

Groucho Marx, Comedian

"This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway"

Bob Dylan, Musician

"Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish"

William Blake, Poet

"Music is the best means we have of digesting time"

W. H. Auden, Poet

"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars"

Gustave Flaubert, Novelist

"Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself"

Samuel Butler, Poet

"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it"

John Lennon, Musician

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

Plutarch, Philosopher

"The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"I think Charley Pride has been one of the best things to happen to country music, to prove it belongs to everybody"

Loretta Lynn, Musician

"Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries"

Jimmy Carter, President

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself"

Abraham Maslow, Psychologist

"Mainly what I learned from Buddy... was an attitude. He loved music, and he taught me that it shouldn't have any barriers to it"

Waylon Jennings, Musician

"I just had lunch with Slash two days ago. He loves Axl. He holds no grudges towards him. Twenty years of great music wasn't created because of some stupid grudge. That's a shame"

Steven Adler, Musician

"There is an integrity to INXS, in the music, that makes it worthwhile"

Michael Hutchence, Musician

"This American Jewish music is a new experience for us at least consciously"

Neville Marriner, Musician

"One of the great virtues, apart from the pleasure of performing these works, is that it's opened up an entirely new, expansive repertoire of American Jewish music"

Neville Marriner, Musician

"Music is the voice of the spiritual world"

Wayne Shorter, Musician

"I run around, I listen to a lot of music, go to a lot of concerts. And when I see someone that gases me, I try to go out of my way to involve them somehow in what I'm doing or get involved in what they're doing"

John Zorn, Composer

"Music is not math. It's science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion"

Bruno Mars, Musician

"If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them"

Luciano Pavarotti, Musician

"I always like to get local music when I'm in another country"

April Winchell, Actress

"And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it's third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it's much more polite"

Miriam Makeba, Musician

"What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another"

Erykah Badu, Musician

"Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought"

E. Y. Harburg, Musician

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

Christian Nestell Bovee, Author

"Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing"

John Philip Sousa, Musician

"I don't see it in terms of changing things, but rather using language and music as weapons for fighting a mainstream media which is predominately right wing, and loyal to the political framework and its corporate interests"

Thom Yorke, Musician

"Others are keen to see if natives other than us live better than we do, without heat in pipes, ice in boxes, sunshine in bulbs, music on disks, or images gliding over a pale screen"

Ella Maillart, Writer

"Saxophone is one thing, and music is another"

Steve Lacy, Musician

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