Greatest Music Quotes

#1. Music is part of history, and our history has lessons that cannot be separated from our greatest music.

Mstislav Rostropovich

#2. Laughter is the greatest music in the world and audiences come to my shows to escape the cares of life. They don't want to be embarrassed or insulted. They want to laugh and so do I - which is probably why it works.

Ken Dodd

#3. The greatest music is made for love, not for money.

Greg Lake

#4. Sad beyound words that Prince is gone. To me he was one of the greatest music heroes- a true genius.There will never be another Prince.

Shania Twain

#5. ... frankly I'm not going to listen to someone hold forth on the Greatest Music of All Time if they start with the beatles. If they start with Mozart I'll have a little patience; because I know that Bach is better.

Nathan "N.R." Gaddis

#6. I was a Gordon Lightfoot fan before he ever had a song out. You just knew he was pure talent and he was going to be successful. Gordon has written and recorded some of the greatest music ever.

Ronnie Hawkins

#7. Some of the greatest films and television have only been seen by the people that make them. And some of the greatest music is only heard by the people who make it.

Jussie Smollett

#8. I had no desire to be famous; I just wanted to make the greatest music ever made. I didn't want anyone to know who I was.

Robert Smith

#9. Religious music is by far the greatest music of the ages. What is there to compare-in rhythmic beauty, poetic sublimity, and inspired teachings-with the Psalms of David?

Bruce R. McConkie

#10. I was improvising before I was reading music. I was just trying to play things on the clarinet by ear. I think my ear is one of my greatest assets.

Pete Fountain

#11. Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest.

Jean Douchet

#12. The kids I talk to are convinced their generation will make the best music. And the greatest artists have yet to be discovered. I walk around with that thought every day.

L.A. Reid

#13. The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man.

John Philip Sousa

#14. This guitar is such a pal. It's a psychiatrist. It's a doggone bartender. It's a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I've got a problem, I'll go pick my guitar up and play. It's the greatest pal in the whole world.

Les Paul

#15. Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

Martin Luther

#16. The greatest thing about doing this movie was that Chris and I both were involved in folk music in the '60s. I had a group, but I don't think it was at the same level as Chris, because he's an amazing musician.

Eugene Levy

#17. Some of the greatest sermons that have ever been preached were preached by the singing of a song.

Spencer W. Kimball

#18. The music I was always attracted to and the shows I was really into like, you know, those weekend Don Kirshner shows, "Midnight Special," those shows, I remember watching those and the music was just on; it was the greatest radio stations.

Bobby Cannavale

#19. I thank the Creator of the universe to have discovered the discipline of music was the greatest gift that I could have been given, the possibility to be a student working in the world.

Anthony Braxton

#20. Music is painted upon a canvas of silence. Mozart used to say, "Silence is the greatest effect in music.

Josef Lhevinne

#21. You're out on stage, the music is blaring, the crowd is screaming, the lights are flashing, your heart is pumping, the sweat is flying, and it's the greatest feeling in the whole world.

Michael Flatley

#22. Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

#23. If it weren't for Criminal Records, Wax-n-facts and other indie record stores I could have only sold my CD's at my shows and by mail order as an independent artist. The greatest stores that have character and include a much wider range of music of music are all independent, mom and pop stores.

Shawn Mullins

#24. Talent will only take you so far, and it is your ability to feel the music and explore a movement that will bring you the greatest pleasure in dance.

Karen Kain

#25. I had some good teachers. One of the greatest teachers I've had is bluegrass music: going back and listening to Bill Monroe's music, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs. When I was with Ralph Stanley I learned a lot from him.

Ricky Skaggs

#26. When I got a little bit older I wanted to play piano - that's all I wanted to do. I remember learning how to play a blues progression on the xylophone in music class and thinking "This is the greatest thing I've ever learned."

Zooey Deschanel

#27. Bach's music is really some of the greatest. I think, in some ways, Bach is the most profound composer of all.

Joshua Bell

#28. What city has given the world more in terms of American culture than New Orleans? There is none. Not New York. Not L.A. Not Chicago. Not anywhere, in the sense that African American music has gone around the world twenty times over, and it's continuing to evolve. It is our greatest cultural export.

David Simon

#29. I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people joyful; they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.

Martin Luther

#30. I think it's the strength of her music, using art to make a statement. I think it really is. It was not a cheap gift. The gift was an expensive gift for Nina [Simone]. Diamonds are expensive. Her music was expensive. She paid for it, but I think it's her greatest gift.

Nikki Giovanni

#31. I think that's one of the greatest gifts you get if you're successful at something like music or film or photography - any of the arts - you can sit there and think. It's so much fun to sit there and think and wonder about the world and the universe.

Albert Hammond Jr.

#32. I was listening to all those lyrics and trying to take in everything that was happening. I was completely excited. It was one of the greatest times that I had listening to music.

Jay McShann

#33. Lights are to drama what music is to the lyrics of a song. The greatest part of my success in the theatre I attribute to my feeling for colors, translated into effects of light.

David Belasco

#34. The best picture has not yet been painted; the greatest poem is still unsung; the mightiest novel remains to be written; the divinest music has not been conceived, even by Bach. In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has not yet been discovered.

Lincoln Steffens

#35. Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution - the 60's comes from it.

Leonard Bernstein

#36. I hope that my life ends up being my greatest work of art, not just my music.

Jewel

#37. You dont make music for immortality you make music for the moment of capturing the sheer joy of being alive on planet earth, WOW! is this fun ... this is just the greatest everybody should live it that way.

Ray Manzarek

#38. Guitarists shouldn't get too riled up about all of the great players that were left off of 'Rolling Stone Magazines' list of the Greatest Guitar Players of all Time' ... Rolling Stone is published for people who read the magazine because they don't know what to wear ...

Joe Satriani

#39. As an artist, you dream about accumulating enough successful music to someday do just one greatest-hits album, but to reach the point where you're releasing your second collection of hits is beyond belief.

Gloria Estefan

#40. Music is my greatest love. If I could play an instrument I would be a musician.

Ryan Phillippe

#41. But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.

Diana Krall

#42. I peeked in the bag. Do you know what was in there? I'll tell you what was in there: a collapsible tray table. Is there any sadder purchase in this fucking world? Maybe a CD of C+C Music Factory's Greatest Hits, but that's about it.

Caroline Kepnes

#43. No one understands another's grief, no one understands another's joy ... My music is the product of my talent and my misery. And that which I have written in my greatest distress is what the world seems to like best.

Franz Schubert

#44. I wouldn't say that I'm the greatest guitarist ever. I'd say probably that I'm the greatest guitarist sitting in this chair.

Jimi Hendrix

#45. I want longevity; I love music, being a musician is the greatest gift in the world to me, and if I were to get signed to a label, my family and team around me are always gonna be there to make sure they want the very best for me. My fans are what it's all about ...

Christina Grimmie

#46. Music will always be my greatest passion.

Vanessa Mae

#47. Humans have very odd tastes. They think their music is beautiful. They are wrong. It is awful. All of it. And they completely ignore their greatest accomplishments: the cinnamon bun, the Snickers bar, the hot pepper, and the refreshing beverage called vinegar.

Katherine Applegate

#48. What music "means" is almost completely dependent on the people who sell it and the people who buy it, not the people who make it. Our greatest artists are the ones who understand how they can be interesting and unique within those limitations.

Chuck Klosterman

#49. I don't care for the music when they're talking bad about women because I think women are God's greatest gift to the planet - I just like music.

B.B. King

#50. My name is Monica, and I am not submissive. I stand six feet tall in heels. I am descended from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I can sing like an angel, and growl like a lion. I am not owned. I am music.

C.D. Reiss

#51. If you look at an old piece of sheet music, there's all kinds of text on it, there are ads, there are proclamations of the greatest songs' success, there's artwork. So there is a tactile, physical experience of learning the song and the way it's notated.

Beck

#52. In addition, I think religion has a chance of a look-in whenever the mind craves solace in music or poetry
in any form of art at all. Personally, I think it is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communication all the other arts attempt.

Dodie Smith

#53. Even the greatest poets, I think, cannot quite get to the places that music can get to in the human - I was gonna say mind, but it's actually the entire body. It somehow seems to infuse the entire body.

Hugh Laurie

#54. Music is one of my greatest loves. I don't think I would be able to live without music in my life.

Naya Rivera

#55. To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

Truman Capote

#56. I still believe that music is one of the greatest gifts that God gave to man.

George Michael

#57. Your uniqueness is your greatest strength, not how well you emulate others.

Simon S. Tam

#58. The opportunity to perform my music for billions of people around the globe will be the greatest highlight of my life, I am honoured to be part of the biggest sports event in the world.

Tiesto

#59. The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.

David Attenborough

#60. I just assumed the world was full of solo percussionists. I couldn't find sticks or music or anything where I was, but that was expected because there was nothing there anyway. And I think that was possibly the greatest asset for me, just not knowing.

Evelyn Glennie

#61. Music has always been the greatest expression of mortal philosophy," continued Lucky. "The path to enlightenment is found in the lyrics of Spinal Tap.

A. Lee Martinez

#62. History's greatest composers would be appalled to hear their greatest works reduced to distorted hold music for businesses.

Michael P. Naughton

#63. When I started writing again, especially when I listened to French music and Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, I realized that these lots talked about themselves. The greatest artists, they didn't sing; they only spoke.

Benjamin Clementine

#64. The greatest predictor of musical success is the quality and the quantity of practice time.

Michael Griffin

#65. I don't ever balk at being considered a Motown person, because Motown is the greatest musical event that ever happened in the history of music.

Smokey Robinson

#66. At the same time, I was listening to black music, and I began to think that the best musicians were receiving the worst treatment. The people who were doing the greatest work were despised as lower class, with no dignity accorded to what they did.

Henry Flynt

#67. I am singing a genre of music that people are very protective of. I am being compared to the greatest vocalist of all time.

Michael Buble

#68. I have been influenced by the greatest artists in jazz, pop, reggae, traditional, ballards, pop, and all types of music, taking the best from each to represent my own personality. Whitney Houston, George Michaels, Sade, Phil Collins, and many others have influenced me.

Laura Pausini

#69. I like pop music. Earnestly. Most of the greatest technicians, mix engineers, and players are working in pop music.

Autre Ne Veut

#70. Music is everywhere," Maude said softly. "It is in the water, in the wind's hum, in the bird's cry, in the boat's horn. Rhythm surrounds us. That is one of life's greatest gifts.

Anna Adams

#71. My greatest accomplishment is the freedom for doing what I want to do with my music ... I love my freedom so I'm happy I am a free artist.

Ziggy Marley

#72. I don't know if I have a 'Greatest Album Ever.' I really liked 'The Blueprint' by Jay-Z. The production on that album was really great. 'All I Need' was the first song I used for walk-on music in 2002 for my second time ever on stage, so that means a lot to me.

Hannibal Buress

#73. Everything in New Orleans was competitive. People would always be betting on who was the best and the greatest in everything. That's where the battles of music came in.

Danny Barker

#74. There is a view that jazz is 'evil' because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good.

Garth Hudson

#75. Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.

Joseph Addison

#76. Mozart, who was buried in a pauper's grave, was one of the greatest successes we know of, a man who in his early thirties had poured out his inexhaustible gift of music, leaving the world richer because he had passed that way. To leave the world richer - that is the ultimate success.

Eleanor Roosevelt

#77. Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn't my music. My music was the blues.

Jerry Leiber

#78. The sudden passing of Jack Bruce is terribly sad news. One of the greatest rock bassists to ever live and a true and profound inspiration to countless musicians. He was one of my first bass heroes and was a major influence on my playing and my music. My heartfelt condolences to his family and fans.

Geddy Lee

#79. Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

#80. Steve Marcus was one of the greatest saxophonists in all of music. He truly was able to unite jazz with the popular music of the time.

Larry Coryell

#81. History's greatest composers world be rolling in their graves if they knew that their beautiful compositions were reduced to distorted hold music.

Michael P. Naughton

#82. My passion for music is one of my greatest loves.

Naya Rivera

#83. I asked my daughter when she was 16, What's the buzz on the street with the kids? She's going, to be honest, Dad, most of my friends aren't into Kiss. But they've all been told that it's the greatest show on Earth.

Ace Frehley

#84. I remember being in college and taking a class on classical music and getting a big laugh when I said very sincerely that I was not really into trained voices. Some of the greatest singers can transcend their technical perfection and still sound great.

Ira Kaplan

#85. In ancient times the greatest of the prophets were great musicians.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

#86. The final, unfinished fugue from The Art of Fugue is the greatest piece of music ever composed.

Glenn Gould

#87. As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm.

Daron Malakian

#88. The greatest respect an artist can pay to music is to give it life.

Pablo Casals

#89. In brain scans, music lights up the medial prefrontal cortex and triggers a memory that starts playing in your mind. All of a sudden you can see a place, a person, an incident. The strongest responses to music - the ones that elicit vivid memories - cause the greatest activity on brain scans.

Jodi Picoult

#90. I am proud that [I was] , , , enabled to guide this great talent ... towards the superb fulfillment of its individual potentialities, towards the greatest independence.

Alban Berg

#91. When someone pursues music through your music, that's the greatest accolade anybody can get.

Rick Springfield

#92. There are moments when great music can be the greatest service and charity.

Michael Leunig

#93. The greatest contribution jazz has made in music has been to replace the role of the conductor with a member of the ensemble who, instead of waving his arms to keep time and convey mood, is an active member of the musical statement. That person is the drummer.

Elvin Jones

#94. Most things, even the greatest moments on earth, have their beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city might begin with a tremor, a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a vibration.

Lauren Oliver

#95. MTV has always given artists a platform to get their stories and music out to their fans and this series reveals the unknown side of T.I.-one of the world's greatest artists at the most precarious time in his life.

T.I.

#96. The acquisition of an accurate and easy conversation, of some skill in music, and in pure and healthful diversions, are of great benefit in fitting one for social intercourse, in which one of the greatest sources of pleasure is found.

Joseph P. Bradley

#97. Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.

Robert Schumann

#98. I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime writer who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music.

James Ellroy

#99. I think J.S. Bach's music stands among humankind's greatest accomplishments. For me, Bach's music is not only as good as music gets, but also as good as it gets, period
as good as existence, reality, life and the world.

Andrew W.K.

#100. The greatest DJ is one who can live within the formula and make it sound ... as if he producing and pulling the music all by himself.

Dick Biondi