Music quotes
3.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside music — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spiritual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it's not going to do anything for you."
"Music is not merely a study, it is an entertainment; wherever there is music there is a throng of listeners."
"But hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity."
"Sweetest melodies.Are those that are by distance made more sweet."
"Music is the purest form of art... therefore true poets...seek to express the universe in terms of music. The singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside."
"My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil."
"All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!"
"Sounds travel through space long after their wave patterns have ceased to be detectable by the human ear: some cut right through the ionosphere and barrel on out into the cosmic heartland, while others bounce around, eventually being absorbed into the vibratory fields of earthly barriers, but in neither case does the energy succumb; it goes on forever - which is why we, each of us, should take pains to make sweet notes."
"Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman."
"There is no truer truth obtainable by Man than comes of music"
"I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase."
"Jazz is something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live."
"Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!"
"I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says."
"Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record."
"I have so many opinions about everything it just comes out during my music. It's a battle for me. I try not to be preachy. That's a real danger."
"All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours."
"Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols or bombs without incurring any penalties."
"I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music."
"Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance."
