Top 100 Miles Davis Quotes

#1. Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #8155
#2. If you understood everything I said, you'd be me

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #70587
#3. Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #94124
#4. I was minding my own business when something says to me, "you ought to blow trumpet." I have just been trying ever since.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #97901
#5. I always listen to what I can leave out.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #99029
#6. Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #138875
#7. I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #157933
#8. White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean?

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #201092
#9. To keep creating you have to be about change.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #227341
#10. If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #230107
#11. Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #233838
#12. If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #246766
#13. See, music is about style.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #263633
#14. Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #271207
#15. Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #302020
#16. [Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #306969
#17. You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #313704
#18. Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #314138
#19. You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #324998
#20. If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's and couldn't play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #348104
#21. Music is the framework around the silence.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #354952
#22. You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line ... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #379292
#23. You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #464617
#24. Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #486264
#25. When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you ... their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #489232
#26. You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #501648
#27. He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #507156
#28. I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #517786
#29. My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #534961
#30. When you're creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #605270
#31. At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #616646
#32. For me, music and life are all about style.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #628493
#33. Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #633822
#34. It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #642287
#35. WE WERE ALL UP IN THAT SHIT LIKE A MUTHAFUCKA. IT'S CLEANER THAN A BROKE DICK DOG.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #642604
#36. I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #691458
#37. You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #697468
#38. When the band plays fast, you play slow; when the band plays slow, you play fast.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #744920
#39. Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #755277
#40. Naw, I wasn't going to sell my principles for them. I wanted to be accepted as a good musician and that didn't call for no grinning, but just being able to play the horn good. And that's what I did then and now. Critics can take that or leave it.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #765492
#41. Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #771416
#42. So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #815841
#43. You have to be born with it. You can't even buy it. If you could buy it, they'd have it at the next Newport Festival.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #858890
#44. Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #867447
#45. All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #870421
#46. I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #890565
#47. 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.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #890881
#48. My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #908851
#49. I'll play it first and figure out what it's called later.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #942268
#50. The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #953719
#51. Don't be afraid of mistakes - There are none.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #972082
#52. I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #981687
#53. It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #998381
#54. A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1006689
#55. If you're trying to be hip, be hip.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1018090
#56. First you imitate, then you innovate.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1026395
#57. I still got my Ferrari.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1028006
#58. In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1030675
#59. Always listen for what you can leave out.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1034075
#60. That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1041511
#61. If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1157367
#62. You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1164005
#63. That was my gift ... having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1166174
#64. Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1170912
#65. I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1185681
#66. I hate how white people always try to take credit for something after they discover it. Like it wasn't happening before they found out about it
which most times is always late, and they didn't have nothing to do with it happening.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1187072
#67. Play what you know and then play above that

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1232322
#68. The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1248394
#69. We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1261441
#70. If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1261490
#71. Do not be afraid of errors. There are no errors.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1280260
#72. I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1294222
#73. It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1302946
#74. I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1325406
#75. 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.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1410340
#76. It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1414852
#77. In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1474392
#78. Food makes my mind sluggish.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1474514
#79. I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1486699
#80. As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1511505
#81. I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1511652
#82. If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1511843
#83. I'm a fiend when it comes to good pastry, and the French make the best as far as I'm concerned.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1537157
#84. There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1563712
#85. The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1586979
#86. Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1588385
#87. I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1597109
#88. Music is an addiction.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1626729
#89. When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1666806
#90. Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1702444
#91. It's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of shit is that, but white people's shit?

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1718920
#92. You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1726102
#93. Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1735470
#94. I'll play it and tell you what it is later.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1769884
#95. I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1775284
#96. Always look ahead, but never look back.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1792013
#97. Don't play what's there; play what's not there.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1798606
#98. It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1830549
#99. I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1843658
#100. Sometimes you have to play a long time to play like yourself.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes #1878801

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