Music Quotes for your Inspiration

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Welcome to GTiD's music quotes! These quotes are taken from our BLOG, where one is published -almost- daily, for your inspiration (as of 04.05.09). So you can expect this section to grow pretty quickly!

You can explore this section in two ways: The fisrt is to see the quotes in the order in which they were published via our RSS feed and Blog. Don't forget to subscribe!

Disclaimer: These quotes are not intended to represent my own points of view. I've chosen them because each is profoundly revealing in two ways:

So, I hope you enjoy this kaleidoscope of ideas as much as I have enjoyed putting it together it for you!!!

quote: 08.02.10

"I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity."
-Igor Stravinsky

quote: 09.02.10

"I've been told that my music tells a story, but I don't know the story."
-Tristan Murail

quote: 10.02.10

"The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's. "
-R.W. Emerson

quote: 11.02.10

"Diz for Pres"
-From a bumper sticker: Dizzy Gillespie postulated himself for president in the 1964 U.S. elections. He said that if he got elected, the White House would be renamed "The Blues House"! His proposed cabinet: Duke Ellington: Secretary of State; Miles Davis: Director of the CIA; Max Roach: Secretary of Defense; Charles Mingus: Secretary of Peace; Ray Charles: Librarian of Congress; Louis Armstrong: Secretary of Agriculture; Mary Lou Williams: Ambassador to the Vatican; Thelonious Monk: Travelling Ambassador; and Malcolm X: Attorney General). He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller.

quote: 12.02.10

"I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust."
-Igor Stravinsky

quote: 13.02.10

"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."
-Janis Joplin

quote: 05.23.10

"Before I compose a piece, I walk round it several times, accompanied by myself."
-Erik Satie

quote: 05.21.10

"People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least while the music lasts."

quote: 05.20.10

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

quote: 05.18.10

"Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words."
-Franz Liszt

quote: 05.16.10

"There's two kinds of music: good and bad. I like both."
-Duke Ellington

quote: 04.08.10

"Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!"
-Miles Davis

quote: 04.07.10

"Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day. "
-Franz Liszt

quote: 04.05.10

"The time to hesitate is through."
-Jim Morrison

quote: 04.02.10

"If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound."
-John Cage

quote: 03.31.10

"When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors in its voices..."
-Andres Segovia

quote: 03.29.10

"Great music is better than it can be performed."
-Artur Schnabel

quote: 03.28.10

"For me, every sound has its own minute form -- is composed of small flashing rhythms, shifting tones, has momentum, comes, vanishes, lives out its own structure."

quote: 03.27.10

"We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences."
-Miles Davis

quote: 03.25.10

"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it."
-Igor Stravinsky

quote: 03.20.10

"...That is one of the main causes of this arrogance: the idea of power. Then you lose your true power which is to be part of all, and the only way you can be part of all is to understand it. And when you don't understand, you have to go humbly to it. You don't go to school and say, 'I know what you're going to teach me'."
-John Coltrane

quote: 03.18.10

"To make music means to express human intelligence by sonic means. This is intelligence in its broadest sense, which includes not only the peregrinations of pure logic but also the "logic" of emotions and intuition. My musical techniques, although often rigorous in their internal structure, leave many openings through which the most complex and mysterious factors of the intelligence may penetrate."
-Iannis Xenakis

music quote: 03.17.10

"I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands..."
-Miles Davis

music quote: 03.16.10

"Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music."
-Gyorgy Ligeti

music quote: 03.15.10

"Wealth and fame can only be so important in the face of musical magic."
-Graham Nash

music quote: 03.13.10

"Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you're not. But going below the surface too, it's an active process. It's not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you're tuned out, then you're not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing."
-Pauline Oliveros

music quote: 03.12.10

"My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards, it is the listener who must experiment."
-Edgar Varèse

music quote: 03.11.10

"Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical."
-John Cage

music quote: 03.10.10

"I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing...
the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there's some feeling of communication,
it isn't necessary that it be understood."
-John Coltrane

music quote: 03.09.10

"Don't use your brain to play it, let your feelings guide your fingers."
-Jimi Hendrix

music quote: 03.08.10

"The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet."
-Jeffrey Tate

Rock Quotes from all the rock greats: Jimi Hendrix quotes, John Lennon quotes, Jim Morrison quotes, Frank Zappa quotes, Bob Dylan quotes, Janis Joplin quotes, Elvis quotes, George Harrison quotes, Mick Jagger quotes, Eric Clapton quotes, Robert Fripp quotes, Trent Reznor quotes, Bradley Nowell quotes, Steve Howe quotes, Robbie Robertson quotes, Jimmy Page quotes, Tom Waits quotes, James Brown quotes, Tori Amos quotes, Bryan Ferry quotes, John Denver quotes, and more to come!

Jazz Quotes from all the Jazz greats: Miles Davis quotes, Joe Pass quotes, Charlie Parker quotes, Duke Ellington quotes, Bill Evans quotes, John Coltrane quotes, Dizzy Gillespie quotes, Mike Stern quotes, John Scofield quotes, Oscar Hammerstein quotes, and more to come!