Musicians Opinions Quotes

I remember once I asked Wayne for the time," Miller told Mercer. "He started talking to me about the cosmos and how time is relative." Miller and [Wayne] Shorter were waiting somewhere -- an airport, a train station, a hotel. The band's keyboardist, Joe Zawinul, who took charge of such matters as what the road crew was supposed to do and when, set Miller straight. "You don't ask Wayne shit like that," he snapped. "It's 7:06 p.m." [p.1] ~ Ben Ratliff

When you play music you discover a part of yourself that you never knew existed. ~ Bill Evans

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions. ~ Gore Vidal

I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American. ~ David Mamet

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted? ~ George Carlin

Don't hold strong opinions about things you don't truly understand. ~ Kid Cudi

I wasn't afraid of being alone, but I was afraid of what people would think about my solitary state. People, even well-intentioned people, were always trying to take away our quiet little successes and joys and replace them with big, overarching fears. At this school, the worst thing was trying to rise above the limits set for you by the minds of others. Each girl was an island of her own dreams and insecurities, thoughts that made us different in a deeper way than the differences of musical taste, clothes or even culture. Thoughts about the best way to be stoic, how to live with very little control in life, how to make the most of a miserable time doing something that you were supposed to love. And if people thought that fifteen-year-old girls never thought about these sorts of things, it was only because we didn't have the words to express them.
We talked all the time, but we hadn't yet learned the words to link thoughts and ideas with any depth of feeling, because we didn't really talk to adults. We talked only to each other. And within this little world, we imprisoned one another. You could be anyone you wanted, Linh– until you were judged and held captive by everyone else's thoughts. Nothing has a stronger hold over a girl than the fear of the thoughts of her peers– thoughts that change five times in a day. No wonder things are so complicated with teenagers. ~ Alice Pung

It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I didn't follow the standard rules of bass playing, and many musicians on many different instruments who became noteworthy for their unique or particular style did a very similar thing. ~ Billy Sheehan

Music was literally in the air at the time, the Vienna of 1780. Everybody played music, classical music. There were in fact so many musicians that in apartment buildings people had to come up with a schedule - you practice at 5 p.m., I'll practice at 6 p.m. That way the music didn't collide with one another. ~ Eric Weiner

Not only was he not mad, but he was a musician, and my favorite men had always been musicians or writers or anything that involved the creative process and behaving like tortured artists ... I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac. ~ Marian Keyes

Am I in love? Absolutely. I'm in love with ancient philosophers, foreign painters, classic authors, and musicians who have died long ago. I'm a passionate lover. I fawn over these people. I have given them my heart and my soul. The trouble is, I'm unable to love anyone tangible. I have sacrificed a physical bond, for a metaphysical relationship. I am the ultimate idealistic lover. ~ James Dean

It isn't easy, giving birth to our spiritual potential. Spiritual labor can be very arduous - one holy instant at a time, when we give up, surrender, soften, don't care if we're right, forgo our impatience, detach from the opinions and prizes of the world, and rest in the arms of God. But the end result is the love of our lives. We begin ~ Marianne Williamson

Not things, but opinions about things, trouble men. ~ Epictetus

I am serenading you sweetheart," Kip says, "The way I figure it, you like those idiots who play guitars, so I figure I will learn how to play so I can seduce you. Jagger will understand. I mean he can't play drums for shit, so you will have no choice but to fall madly in love with my guitar and drum playing skills." He grins like a Cheshire cat. ~ Sasha Marshall

I'm allowed to have my opinions as an American, but it seems the Left becomes very intolerant when you have an opinion other than what they state. ~ Joe Wurzelbacher

Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Artists and musicians of the Sixties were definitely into clothes. ~ Yoko Ono

The only sort of pride that may serve a man well on that rarest occasion is his hatred of being wrong. It keeps his mouth shut, his ears open, and his research extensive. And yet this is also the deadliest because when he is in fact proven wrong, he absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. It then keeps his mouth open, his ears shut, and his research inexistent. ~ Criss Jami

if you know whether a man is a decided monist or a decided pluralist, you perhaps know more about the rest of his opinions than if you give him any other name ending in IST. To believe in the one or in the many, that is the classification with the maximum number of consequences. ~ Will James

I was raised around a lot of artists, musicians, photographers, painters and people that were in theater. Just having the art-communal hippie experience as a child, there wasn't a clear line that was drawn. We celebrated creative experience and creative expression. We didn't try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth. ~ Jared Leto

Freedom rings where opinions clash. ~ Adlai E. Stevenson

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. ~ Charles McCabe

The morning, when I need to have opinions and answers across the board very quickly, is a constant fight between ease and inspiration, what will make our lives easier versus what will make us excited because we were ambitious. ~ Allison Silverman

There are only so many letters in the alphabet. When I talk to young musicians or authors and they ask for advice, I say, 'You gotta learn all the letters of your own personal alphabet. With music, you need to know all the different kinds of music and everything in and around your given instrument.' ~ David Lee Roth

In Connecticut the electoral body consisted, from its origin, of the whole number of citizens; and this is readily to be understood, *a when we recollect that this people enjoyed an almost perfect equality of fortune, and a still greater uniformity of opinions. *b In Connecticut, at this period, all the executive functionaries were elected, including the Governor of the State. *c The citizens above the age of sixteen were obliged to bear arms; they formed a national militia, which appointed its own officers, and was to hold itself at all times in readiness to march for the defence of the country. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Locke made the case that religious beliefs are, in the words of the scholar Adam Wolfson, "matters of opinion, opinions to which we are all equally entitled, rather than quanta of truth or knowledge."1 In Locke's formulation, protection against persecution is one of the highest responsibilities of any government or ruler. Locke also argued that where there is coercion and persecution to change hearts and minds, it will "work" only at a very high human cost, producing in its wake both cruelty and hypocrisy. For Locke, no one person should "desire to impose" his or her view of salvation on others. Instead, in his vision of a tolerant society, each individual should be free to follow his or her own path in religion, and respect the right of others to follow their own paths: "Nobody, not even commonwealths," Locke wrote, "have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretense of religion."2 ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The ordinary method of education is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

A citizen is no greater than his ideology,
no cleverer than his intellect,
no nobler than his aspirations,
and no stronger than his opinions.

A nation is no greater than its consciousness,
no richer than its heritage,
no grander than its potential,
and no loftier than its luminaries.

The world is no greater than its leaders,
no smarter than its teachers,
no better than its preachers,
and no higher than its philosophers. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Why, then, does this burning zeal for God, for the Church, and for the salvation of souls - burning I say, literally, with fire and faggot - pass by those moral vices and wickednesses, without any chastisement, which are acknowledged by all men to be diametrically opposite to the profession of Christianity, and bend all its nerves either to the introducing of ceremonies, or to the establishment of opinions, which for the most part are about nice and intricate matters, that exceed the capacity of ordinary understandings? ~ John Locke

We can't manipulate people into swallowing our boundaries by sugarcoating them. Boundaries are a "litmus test" for the quality of our relationships. Those people in our lives who can respect our boundaries will love our wills, our opinions, our separateness. Those who can't respect our boundaries are telling us that they don't love our nos. They only love our yeses, our compliance. "I only like it when you do what I want. ~ Henry Cloud

Surrounding myself with people I enjoy being with made the sessions effortless. Everyone came prepared and ready to play. All were great musicians and they came to the studio to give everything they had. ~ Stanley Clarke

My application's not bought,' I am telling them, calling into the darkness of the red cave that opens out before closed eyes. 'I am not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I'm complex.
'I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk. Let's talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table,' I say. 'I'm not just a creatus, manufactured, conditioned, bred for a function.'

I open my eyes. 'Please don't think I don't care. ~ David Foster Wallace

From Sextus, a benevolent disposition, and the example of a family governed in a fatherly manner, and the idea of living conformably to nature; and gravity without affectation, and to look carefully after the interests of friends, and to tolerate ignorant persons, and those who form opinions without consideration: ~ Marcus Aurelius

The realization that my problem was one that concerned all men, a problem of living and thinking, suddenly swept over me and I was overwhelmed by fear and respect as I suddenly saw and felt how deeply my own personal life and opinions were immersed in the eternal stream of great ideas. Though it offered some confirmation and gratification, the realization was not really a joyful one. It was hard and had a harsh taste because it implied responsibility and no longer being allowed to be a child; it meant standing on one's own feet. ~ Hermann Hesse

The intentions of record companies are not good, from the musician's perspective. ~ Melissa Auf Der Maur

For it is a most extraordinary, though common, phenomenon to find that perfectly virtuous and upright people often like to be thought just a little wicked, whereas bad people are totally indifferent for the most part as to whether or not anyone thinks them good or not. ~ E.F. Benson

Like most artists and musicians, I considered myself detached from the political life ... but I had an insight that maybe we would have a political contribution to make in the future. ~ Gilberto Gil

My father was a teacher, my mama was a community worker, I taught in so many schools. So when you get that experience of how to communicate with younger people, put that hand on them and give them that old-school feeling, the maturity and adult, a lot of our kids just need the feeling of that love, and that's the frame of reference that I teach from and that's the frame of reference that all of our musicians in the Jazz at Lincoln Center. ~ Wynton Marsalis

A university training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society ... It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them. ~ John Henry Newman

When you approach a problem, strip yourself of preconceived opinions and prejudice, assemble and learn the facts of the situation, make the decision which seems to you to be the most honest, and then stick to it. ~ Chester Bowles

I'd like to think I've left something in the world. Without in any way trying to be morbid, but life is very short, and I'd like to think I'd leave some body of work that would inspire other musicians long after I've gone. ~ Paul Weller

We are all drowning slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths. ~ Jodi Picoult

Doing 'All Good Things' really felt like I was acting for myself rather than anyone else. It gave me a freedom I'd never had before, or knew I had, to do whatever I want to, and to argue my opinions and not just feel like the cute girl on set or the girl in a boy's club. I figured out how I could be both. And it's been different ever since. ~ Kirsten Dunst

We're musicians. We make music for a living. It's that simple. Nothing else matters. ~ Eddie Van Halen

The survival of poor opinions can make a thinker feel as though he is failing humanity. ~ Criss Jami

You need to know that you can't honor God when you're chained to the voice and opinions of man. ~ Tyler Perry

When the voice and the vision on the inside is more profound, and more clear and loud than all opinions on the outside, you've begun to master your life. ~ Dr. John

It is only the most elite of elite musicians whose unconventional approach becomes convention. ~ Steve Vai