"Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent."
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Quote collection
Miles Davis quotes (page 1 of 9)
175 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong."
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"If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow."
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"It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change."
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"In music, silence is more important than sound."
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"See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens."
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"I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life."
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"Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery"
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"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."
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"Do not fear mistakes. There are none."
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"If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted."
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"A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear."
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"If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention."
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"We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences."
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"You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four."
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"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
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"I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead."
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"First you imitate, then you innovate."
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"Always listen for what you can leave out."
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"To keep creating you have to be about change."
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