Top 100 Instrument Quotes
#1. Taxation according to income is the most effective instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#2. Ukraine is the instrument for Russia to test the West's 'red lines'
Lilia Shevtsova
#3. I do go back and listen to my songs. I'm biting my fingernails the whole way through, but I do listen. I have a lot of songs I've wanted to re-record just because of how advanced technology is and the different instrument sounds that I'm more experienced with.
Andrae Crouch
#4. He was impugning my virtue. I ought to have been offended, but for some reason the idea tickled me. That could be my next career: instrument of torture! Seducing prisoners, and then revealing my dragon scales! They would confess out of sheer horror.
Rachel Hartman
#5. I do not play the instrument In longing but in quest Not to be undertaken Not to be lost In a forest of bliss.
Katy Lederer
#6. The foundation is an instrument forged by citizens who transfer profit from the commercial sector and put it directly to work as risk capital for the general betterment of the society.
Richard Cornuelle
#7. If that condition of mind and soul, which we call inspiration, lasted long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument be shattered into fragments.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
#8. Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism - the belief that the individual exists to serve others - is translated into political reality.
Nathaniel Branden
#9. (Dune's Frank) Herbert made religion the inescapable instrument of cultural change.
Joseph Bottum
#10. No woman is a more vibrant instrument in the hands of the Lord than a woman of God who is thrilled to be who she is.
Sheri L. Dew
#11. Art is a language, an instrument of knowledge, an instrument of communication.
Jean Dubuffet
#12. Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with the truth.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#13. This is Communism's view of war. War is necessary. War is an instrument for achieving a goal.
But unfortunately for Communism, this policy ran up against the American atomic bomb in 1945. Then the Communists changed their tactics and suddenly became advocates of peace at any cost.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#14. Since I've grown up I really wanted to be able to create something different. In Persian music, opposite, again, to classical music, that the instrument developed and evolved over, like, hundreds of years, our instrument all remained the same.
Hafez Nazeri
#15. Always continue to perform no matter what or where the activity is: local theater, regional theater, local clubs or coffee shops. Continue to play the guitar or your instrument and always continue to progress or otherwise you will fail.
Tony Vincent
#16. A great voice is a unique instrument, not to sound like another instrument, but to be played like one.
Jeffrey Fry
#17. People have said to me, You can't write songs. You can't play an instrument. But I've got 10 gold records.
Sonny Bono
#18. Translation is a two-edged instrument: it has the special purpose of demonstrating the learner's knowledge of the foreign language, either as a form of control or to exercise his intelligence in order to develop his competence.
Peter Newmark
#19. It's important to me in the creation of it because I figured as soon as I crossed that threshold into effects and loops it would completely undermine the premise of how I go about creating things physically, with the instrument.
Colin Stetson
#20. The Statesman who, knowing his instrument to be ready, and seeing War inevitable, hesitates to strike first is guilty of a crime against his country.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#21. I never played a musical instrument growing up but I knew kids who did and took it very seriously.
Kevin James
#22. 32. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not.
Anonymous
#23. Of the two hundred bones in the human body, more than a quarter are in the foot. It is a more complicated instrument than an automobile transmission, and it is treated with far less consideration.
Barbara Kingsolver
#24. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#25. If I am to serve as an instrument of deceit, at least let it be with a clear conscience. I do not want to be considered either so affectionate or so loyal a servant as to be found fit to betray anyone.
Michel De Montaigne
#26. If the church were the goal, then sustaining that church would logically be the priority of the highest order. But if the Kingdom of God was the goal, then the Kingdom-building instrument would gladly self-sacrifice for the eternal prize.
Jeff Christopherson
#27. Genetics and beats? I feel like the drumbeat is a natural thing. Our heartbeat moves at a certain BPM. The drumbeat, being the first instrument, the platform for us, being that we all kind of come from that - it's all beats.
Q-Tip
#28. Freedom is not merely a word or an abstract theory, but the most effective instrument for advancing the welfare of man.
John F. Kennedy
#29. THE COMPUTER IS JUST AN INSTRUMENT for doing faster what we already know how to do slower. All pretensions to computer intelligence and paradise-tomorrow promises should be toned down before the public turns away in disgust. And if that should happen, our civilization might not survive.
Gian-Carlo Rota
#30. Anything has a rhythm to it, comedy or drama. There has to be a musicality to it. And everybody can't play the same instrument, ideally. But I think that we all have the same comedic tendencies, and that's why it works. We all sort of agree with what's funny.
Bradley Cooper
#32. Art is a product of the intuitive - the most powerful instrument within us. The intuitive is the most accurate sense we have.
Louis I. Kahn
#33. My first instrument was actually the trombone, but that didn't last long. Soon I was playing guitar in bands from the time I was 11 or 12.
Dave Grohl
#34. Disarmament should be conducive to the enhancement of every country's general security instead of becoming the instrument and means for a few countries to strengthen their military superiority by weakening or restricting other countries.
Sha Zukang
#35. The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being
Thomas Jefferson
#36. Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Ambrose Bierce
#37. DYNAM comes from the Greek dynamis, meaning "power." A dyne is a unit used in measuring force; an instrument that measures force is called a dynamometer. And when Alfred Nobel invented a powerful explosive in 1867, he named it dynamite.
Merriam-Webster
#38. I had decided that if I was going to be a singer, I had to earn it. I had to learn how to play an instrument.
Madonna Ciccone
#39. Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
E. M. Forster
#40. People say that steadiness of mind is an end; no, it is a beginning. I am there; I can explain everything up to that point. Then I struggle to discover what comes after, so this steadiness is not an end, it is the beginning and the instrument.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#41. A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I'm very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.
Eddie Van Halen
#42. The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.
Woodrow Wilson
#43. That before living agent, now became the living instrument.
Herman Melville
#44. The accountability of government has gone to the point where the very use of the law is the instrument of illegality.
Ralph Nader
#45. For me I feel close to the Savior when I can do in a small way for someone else, what He would do if He were there. In a way, that's what being an instrument in all about ... to make it possible for His love to reach more of His children.
Barbara W. Winder
#46. I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.
Richard Thompson
#47. Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you're playing an instrument that is really hard.
Jimmy Page
#48. I had trouble fitting in, in a musical sense. A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.
Tre Cool
#49. Piano is very elegant. I also think it's a very truthful instrument.
Howard Shore
#50. Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form.
John French Sloan
#51. The stage sharpened my creative instrument and encouraged me to go deeper and try new things.
Ben Vereen
#52. Who needs to be a Phoenix for rebirth? One simply requires themselves and an instrument to clean the slate and start over, perhaps create their own world where everything is better..
TheBakaViolinist
#53. The physical world exists, but that's only the paint and canvas; that's only the instrument we use to make music; that's only the stage where the play is performed.
Dennis Vickers
#54. At age ten I switched to guitar, and I've loved the instrument ever since. And I love to practice. I just do. I just love guitar. It still brings a smile to my face!
Michael Angelo Batio
#55. 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
#56. I can't draw a stick person. I can't play a musical instrument. But I've always had a knack for making money.
Tilman J. Fertitta
#57. An actor is like an instrument, tune them, play them the right way.
Ricky Schroder
#58. The body on the ground is nothing more than a shell, a husk, and I am filled with a sense of peace. Yes, I think. Yes. This is what I want to be. An instrument of mercy, not vengeance.
R.L. LaFevers
#59. In the beginning of my twenties, I started transcendental meditation. For years, I did nothing else. Every holiday, I went to courses. Meditation is a real simple instrument. You don't need a long beard or a sari. It's meant to bring you to yourself. It's as easy as that.
Peter Lindbergh
#60. You came to us a lump of clay, and we molded you into an instrument of Death.
Robin LaFevers
#61. Every war, every plague is God's judgment. But every man who rises up to stop the wars and the plagues is God's instrument. Human action is God's will, not blind indifference in the face of suffering.
John Kramer
#62. Since love first made the breast an instrument
Of fierce lamenting, by its flame my heart
Was molten to a mirror, like a rose
I pluck my breast apart, that I may hang
This mirror in your sight
Gaze you therein
Muhammad Iqbal
#63. I think the voice is an underrated instrument these days and it's easy to make up for lack of ability with effects. I think sometimes people are more wowed with effects than core craftsmanship. Strong voices are not as common as they used to be.
Victoria Legrand
#64. The voice gets to the soul of a person more than any other instrument. Because it's the voice. It sings talks, it cries, it laughs, it squeals, it barks, it shouts it whispers, There is no other instrument that can do that. We're born with it.
Bobby McFerrin
#65. Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.
Plato
#66. If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the "owner" of the program, that controls the program and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.
Richard Stallman
#67. My parents encouraged us to commit to things, so if we wanted to learn an instrument, it was all the grades and all the theory.
Laura Mvula
#68. I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.
Tom Waits
#69. Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death.
Laini Taylor
#70. Try to remember that you are the instrument and I the doer. If you can hold on to this, no sin can touch you. Instrument,
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
#71. As a melody instrument player, it's all about getting from one note to the next, and those intervals and how you navigate your way through these vertical structures of chords. You realize that everything's moving forward, and it's all linear.
David Sanborn
#72. I want to know whether you are a person devoted to creating or to exchanging in some respect or other: as a creator you belong tothe free, as an exchanger you are their slave and instrument.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#73. Blessed the one who loves truth continually and has not lent his mouth as an instrument of impiety by lying, for he fears the commandment about idle speech.
Ephrem The Syrian
#74. Charlie Parker and Art Tatum to me were genius, and I'm right below that. I did, in my own way, do something different on the instrument, and that's the way I'd like to be remembered.
Buddy DeFranco
#76. Just as the Word of God is used in conversion, so it is a critical instrument in our spiritual growth. By immersing ourselves in the Word of God, we begin to gain the mind of Christ and learn what discipleship is.
In
R.C. Sproul
#77. I like to use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.
Bobby McFerrin
#78. It's interesting to see how acoustic guitars are emerging as a primary instrument once again ... reminds me very much of what Jim Messina and I were doing back then. You can't get too far away from an acoustic guitar
Kenny Loggins
#79. Language is the instrument in all cases and can language be trusted?
If it were not for language, could we lie?
Joyce Carol Oates
#80. The military spirit makes you obedient, it makes you physically very disciplined; but inwardly your mind is gradually destroyed because you are imitating, following, copying. You become a mere tool of the older people, of the politician, an instrument of propaganda.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#81. We are members of a vast cosmic orchestra, in which each living instrument is essential to the complementary and harmonious playing of the whole.
J. Boone
#82. The human voice was the first instrument and remains the most powerful and effective method of musical creation and emotional transference.
Deke Sharon
#83. God is the ruler of history. His times are well chosen The Roman Empire was an instrument in his hand. And so are the nations of the modern world.
John Gresham Machen
#84. Norman Mailer records in his recent essays and public appearances his perfecting of himself as a virile instrument of letters; he is perpetually in training, getting ready to launch himself from his own missile pad into a high, beautiful orbit; even his failures may yet be turned to successes.
Susan Sontag
#85. I think my first instrument was a ukulele that they gave me. I used to know how to play that pretty well.
Don Henley
#86. The black instrument on the hall table trilled its hysterical note over and over, like a nervous bird.
Sylvia Plath
#87. My father was in a dance band, and I wanted to do what he did, play the saxophone, but I couldn't blow a note, so he suggested the guitar. Chromatic harmonica was actually my first instrument, and I got very good at it - not quite Stevie Wonder, but very good.
Pete Townshend
#88. You can indulge your righteous rage but the things it comes out of are pretty cheap. The trick is to make yourself an instrument of your own policy. Whether you like it or not, that's the highest effectiveness man has achieved.
Norman Mailer
#89. Riches are but a means, or instrument; and the virtue of an instrument lies in its use.
Benjamin Whichcote
#90. Music gives inspiration ... one that sounds windy with humming sound, such can put you in a trance, only to come back and discover some witty ideas.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#91. I think 'Tap Dogs' has lasted so long because people have a natural interest in tap dancing. This form of dancing can't be dated, it's such an intriguing form of dance because the feet are also an an instrument.
Adam Garcia
#92. I'm also very impressed with the best people in experimental electronic world, like Peta and Eckart Aillers and Finez and Jim O'Rourke and Oren Umbarci and Francesco Lopez. Most of them use the computer as their main instrument.
John Frusciante
#93. Collage is a supersensitive and scrupulously accurate instrument, similar to a seismograph, which is able to record the exact amount of the possibility of human happiness at any period.
Max Ernst
#94. Who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
Kahlil Gibran
#95. It's a kind of de-familiarization in relation to the song: if she were to sing absolutely straight, right on the beat, because of the richness and intensity of her instrument - her voice - I think it could actually feel a little inhuman, too good somehow, separate from our concerns.
Matthew Zapruder
#96. My headmaster chastised me with a diabolical instrument a leather strap tacked to a piece of wood but he taught me with such villainous success that I am now Prime Minister.
Robert Menzies
#97. I spend a lot of time copying saxophone players and trumpet players. Not to say that it is not important to listen to guitar players, but there's so much music out there and so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.
Bill Frisell
#98. A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax ... laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize.
Thomas Jefferson
#99. Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.
Edmund Burke
#100. Rock is about finding who you are. You don't necessarily have to play your instrument very well at all. You can just barely get by and you can be in a rock band.
Gene Simmons
