Instrumental Quotes

#1. Sidney Poitier and Sidney Lumet were instrumental in helping me get started as the first black composer to get name credit for movie scores.

Quincy Jones

#2. The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.

Richard Wagner

#3. Achieving what I set out to do: to feel that I was instrumental in starting a great new movement which could not only change the course of things for Humanity and the rest of Creation, but alter Man's expectation of surviving for much longer on this planet.

Donald Watson

#4. We see that reason is wholly instrumental. It cannot tell us where to go; at best it can tell us how to get there. It is a
gun for hire that can be employed in the service of whatever goals we have, good or bad.

Herbert Simon

#5. I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

Rita Dove

#6. Pat has been instrumental in what we've done here so far and the most selfish thing for me is that I want to see what we've done placed in the hands of the most competent person, and that's Pat. No one would come close to being able to continue to build on what we've done here so far like he will.

Bobby Knight

#7. Photography is there to construct the idea of us as a great family and we go on vacations and take these pictures and then we look at them later and we say, 'Isn't this a great family?' So photography is instrumental in creating family not only as a memento, a souvenir, but also a kind of mythology.

Larry Sultan

#8. Instrumental music is nonverbal and thus radically ambiguous. It doesn't lend itself to what might be called content-oriented analysis, though plenty of intellectuals have tried to analyze it in precisely that way.

Terry Teachout

#9. Whatever success we have had in maintaining our culture has been instrumental in Intel's success in surviving strategic inflection points.

Andy Grove

#10. The mind is absolutely instrumental in achieving results, even for athletes. Sports psychology is a very small part, but it's extremely important when you're winning and losing races by hundredths and even thousandths of a second.

Michael Johnson

#11. I had my first 'Survivor Series' in 1991 and I was fortunate enough to be an instrumental part of the shows I was on.

Ric Flair

#12. Wonderful is the power of instrumental music, absolute music without words, that may convey impressions, deep and lasting, no words could give.

Aubertine Woodward Moore

#13. I've studied the lives of the 20th century's great businessmen and concluded self-confidence was instrumental in all their success.

Alex Spanos

#14. The proper role of humanists is not to bring 'human values' to the attention of technicians otherwise engaged in a purely instrumental approach to their calling, but to demand the restoration of the practical or moral element in callings that have degenerated into techniques.

Christopher Lasch

#15. Being a purely instrumental album, it makes a musical statement, not a religious one, and I hope that people can feel the emotion of the great melodies, even without the words.

Kenny G

#16. Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and, above all others, the most useful.

Leonardo Da Vinci

#17. The instrumental pieces are compositions, certainly, although that's not the language that I instinctively use. They're not scored, and arrangements are often arrived at collaboratively. I always choose to play with people whose input I desire.

David Grubbs

#18. I think playing a horn has had a great influence on my singing. I've tried to approach singing from an instrumental mindset. Space is just as important as sound.

Susan Tucker

#19. America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.

James F. Cooper

#20. Tanpinar presciently feared that to embrace the western conception of progress was to be mentally enslaved by a whole new epistemology, one that compartmentalised knowledge and concealed an instrumental view of human beings as no more than things to be manipulated.

Pankaj Mishra

#21. I always felt that I would become somebody outstanding, whether it was in singing, instrumental playing, orchestra conducting, or anything involving feeling.

Rudy Vallee

#22. My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

Tony Iommi

#23. Antiliberals endlessly berate their enemies for "instrumental thinking." But they do not clearly explain the evil of producing better goods at a lower cost.

Stephen Holmes

#24. That peace, safety, and concord may be the portion of our native land, and be long enjoyed by our fellow-citizens, is the most ardent wish of my heart, and if I can be instrumental in procuring or preserving them, I shall think I have not lived in vain.

Thomas Jefferson

#25. I feel I'm able to serve my customer by knowing what she or he wants. One of the ways I'm able to do this is through my website, and email: people give me great ideas, tell me what they want, what they don't want. It's really instrumental, and helps me stay in touch with people.

Kathy Ireland

#26. When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental "Memphis" I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to !

Richard Betts

#27. Usually now a song starts just in my head with a melody or a lyric idea coming first.Then typically I'll go to a guitar, unless it's a instrumental then I'll usually build it on a keyboard instrument.

Eliot Lewis

#28. The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.

Leo Kottke

#29. What I wanted to do was play the guitar but I don't like instrumental rock. I think it is tripe.

Andy Summers

#30. [God] is a kind of perpetual critique of instrumental reason.

Terry Eagleton

#31. As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the Internet

Al Gore

#32. I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.

Leo Kottke

#33. I can count on one hand the number of instrumental hits there have been over the last ten years.

Chuck Mangione

#34. The song that's affected me the most profoundly is probably Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' or, more specifically, the couple seconds of instrumental break before Vincent Price starts 'rapping.'

Patrick Stump

#35. The men and women of our armed forces played an instrumental role in the election process - securing polling sites and providing security - that allowed so many Iraqis the opportunity to vote freely for the first time ever.

John M. McHugh

#36. The best athletes in any sport take stretching very seriously before and after matches. Stretching is instrumental in any athlete's physical success.

Jozy Altidore

#37. ...it is almost always the case that whatever has wounded you will also be instrumental in your healing.

Robert A. Johnson

#38. It comes to me every day of my life that a home spirit is being awakened amongst us, that as a nation we are beginning to realize how important it is to have homes of our own, homes that we like, that we have been instrumental in building, that we will want to have belong to our children.

Gustav Stickley

#39. I was trying to actively get away from music, I guess. But I recorded a whole bunch of instrumental piano songs.

Jens Lekman

#40. Doing the instrumental thing, you're really looking for the power of the melody to carry the record.

Michael W. Smith

#41. People don't learn science in movies. You don't go to the movies thinking, 'I hope I learn some quantum mechanics this afternoon.' But on the other hand, movies are instrumental and influential in getting young people interested in science.

Seth Shostak

#42. My agent Sue realised after 'Cold Feet' that I could have spent the rest of my life doing similar roles. So she was instrumental in moving me away from that.

James Nesbitt

#43. As a young boy, I had strange dreams of affecting people and somehow being instrumental in changing the makeup of Africa and helping to improve life there.

Djimon Hounsou

#44. Who is doing this? Who am I? What is all this? Who is the doer? Who is the nimit (instrumental doer) of this? If all these remain present 'at a time' exactly the way it is, then that is considered shuddha upayog (pure focused applied awareness of the Self, the Soul).

Dada Bhagwan

#45. Righteousness and faith certainly are instrumental in moving mountains - if moving mountains accomplishes God's purposes and is in accordance with His will.

David A. Bednar

#46. Claude Debussy defined the guitar as an expressive harpsicord. I believe that is the best definition ever given of the Spanish guitar. This phrase is the starting point for my Concierto de Aranjuez Our guitar is the only survivor of the rich and anarchic instrumental wildlife of the Middle Ages.

Joaquin Rodrigo

#47. Sometimes God makes use of instruments for good to His people, who designed nothing but evil and mischief to them. Thus Joseph's brethren were instrumental to his advancement in that very thing in which they designed his ruin (Gen. 50:20).

John Flavel

#48. With instrumental music, it is traditionally hard to get exposure.

Yanni

#49. Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labour of all.

Albert Einstein

#50. I'm inspired by the music, always have been, always will be, it's only what a track or instrumental interpretation from a producer can do that will excite my pen into making magic for someone else to enjoy..Only the music inspires me..

Truth Hurts

#51. Or: "The ideal student values knowledge for its own sake, as well as for its instrumental uses. He or she hopes to make a contribution to society at large.

Carol S. Dweck

#52. The success of the abolitionist movement lay in its making real for people in Britain and America the slave ship's pervasive and utterly instrumental terror, which was indeed its defining feature.

Marcus Rediker

#53. Rumble is the best instrumental ever.

Bob Dylan

#54. The Koch brothers tend to give to right-leaning and libertarian causes. Koch money was instrumental, for example, in founding the Cato Institute and the Libertarian Party.

Donald Luskin

#55. Instrumental keys [on organs], introduced in the twelfth century, are so heavy and stiff that they must be played with clenched fists.

Joseph Gies

#56. I just prefer instrumental. I don't need to hear what other people are singing. And if I need music as a backdrop to work or to think, I need to have that part of the brain clear - I don't need people feeding their fantasies into my vision.

Lydia Lunch

#57. In retrospect, golf for me was an apparent attempt to emulate the person I looked up to more than anyone: my father. He was instrumental in helping me develop the drive to achieve, but his role, as well as my mother's, was one of support and guidance, not interference.

Tiger Woods

#58. ... evangelicals were instrumental in advancing the ideal of companionate marriage, one built on shared faith and mutual affection, a revolutionary notion in an era in which forced marriages were a not-so-distant memory.

Karen Swallow Prior

#59. The magic that you find in surf music, I think, is really timeless. You know, when I was very young, I was in a surf band. Surf music is an instrumental music that still means a lot to me, not in an nostalgic way, but as something that really gets to the heart of the guitar itself.

John Zorn

#60. In addition to the clean coal provisions, the energy conference agreement contains provisions instrumental in helping increase conservation and lowering consumption.

Jerry Costello

#61. The instrumental record is a bit subtler. It's the kind of stuff on sound check, when I first pick up my violin and start to play, the kind of melodies that just pour out of me. Some of them sound very classical. Some of them sound experimental, polyrhythmic loops that I make.

Andrew Bird

#62. America is new to instrumental dance tracks on the radio, we were all so surprised "Animals" did so well on the radio.

Martin Garrix

#63. (Theodore) Roosevelt considered his experience with 'fellow ranchmen on what was then the frontier' to be 'the most educational asset' of his entire life, instrumental to his success in becoming president.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

#64. Doubt and faith are parts of human experience, whether one views them as right or wrong. Also doubt and faith are instrumental to grasping truth in some very obvious senses.

Leviak B. Kelly

#65. I think maybe I was instrumental in taking the stereotype out of the Southern actor is some ways. I would hope my legacy would be as a serious actor who told the truth and did parts based on the quality of part and not necessarily the money.

Billy Bob Thornton

#66. Food movement organic food stores supplies health food products and facilitate with instrumental support in organic agriculture.

Tony Benn

#67. Instrumental music was only tolerated, on account of the times and of the people. But in gospel times, we must not have recourse to these, unless we wish to destroy the evangelical perfection, and to obscure the meridian light, which we enjoy in Christ our Lord.

John Calvin

#68. When the sexes differ in beauty, in the power of singing, or in producing what I have called instrumental music, it is almost invariably the male which excels the female.

Charles Darwin

#69. Most of the music I've listened to or grew up listening to - a lot of it at least - is instrumental stuff.

Flume

#70. To assign to everybody his proper place in society is the task of the consumers. Their buying and abstention from buying is instrumental in determining each individual's social position.

Ludwig Von Mises

#71. Being able to save, make non-cash payments, send or receive remittances, get credit, or get insurance can be instrumental in raising living standards and helping businesses prosper. It helps people to invest more in education or health care.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati

#72. While most of the music I write is instrumental, I love to use the human voice as another instrument.

Yanni

#73. I would argue that Asean has been instrumental in driving both economic growth and political development, and that there can be no clearer example than its relations with Myanmar.

Najib Razak

#74. Nothing can be lower or more wholly instrumental than the substance and cause of all things.

George Santayana

#75. The character of instrumental music ... lets the emotions radiate and shine in their own character without presuming to display them as real or imaginary representations.

Franz Liszt

#76. Singing instrumental music is most important because, while you play an instrument, you are singing through the instrument ... actually, you are singing inside.

Ali Akbar Khan

#77. I dread naming pieces of music because being instrumental, most of the time the songs that I write are instrumental, I want the listener to make up their own story as to what it is and get the emotion pure without using logic.

Yanni

#78. There is no need to slander the nimit (one who is instrumental), it is only necessary to distance yourself from that nimit.

Dada Bhagwan

#79. If vaccination can be conscripted into acts of war, it can still be instrumental in works of love.

Eula Biss

#80. In the Bible, fate was often presented as the handmaiden of morality: sin was succeeded by misfortune, righteousness by prosperity, with reward and punishment instrumental in persuading man to obey divine commandments.

Israel Shenker

#81. I would argue that television and particularly the BBC were instrumental in puffing up the Royal Family to a level where they were inflated out of all, all proportion to their relevance on the national scene.

Andrew Morton

#82. How strange that something so simple could have been instrumental in my decision to ruin one of my most relationships and friendships, and damage another.

Veronica Roth

#83. Millennials' tech and global savvy will make them instrumental in shaping our mobile future worldwide.

Brad D. Smith

#84. Ironically, by struggling so hard to circumvent the prophecy of his death at the hand of his son, Laius became instrumental in its coming to pass.

Carrie Ryan

#85. I just started as a part of the public school music program. I took lessons at the school every Friday and was a part of the school band. I was just a normal kid taking instrumental lessons at school, nothing special.

Kenny G

#86. Lord, save the Church from desiring to have pews, choirs, organs, or instrumental music, and a congregational ministry, like other heathen Churches around them!

Peter Cartwright

#87. Our instrumental part in the symphony of life is to allow love to create a space within our own awareness, through which the undreamed mystery may emerge as a knowable reality.

Eric Micha'el Leventhal

#88. It's hard to put my music in a specific genre, but if you had to, "instrumental cyber metal" would be an accurate one.

Paul Wardingham

#89. My mother used to pitch to me and my father would shag balls. If I hit one up the middle close to my mother, I'd have some extra chores to do. My mother was instrumental in making me a pull hitter.

Eddie Mathews

#90. I wrote my first song, 'Conversion', to this little hip-hop instrumental. I went to an open-mic, plugged my iPod into the P.A., and sang over the beat.

Leon Bridges

#91. Instrumental music can spread the international language.

Herb Alpert

#92. The question to ask about education is not 'What can I do with it?' That is the wrong question because it concentrates on instrumental values and reduces everything to a useful art. The right question is rather 'What can it do to me?

Arthur F. Holmes

#93. Treasures are no longer to be got by instrumental art.

Clara Schumann

#94. My solo albums will be instrumental, but I would be open to working with a vocalist if the right project came along.

Paul Wardingham

#95. On thee, Jesus, all our hopes depend. In thee all power is vested, even power to make sinful creatures instrumental in enlightening the heathen.

Adoniram Judson

#96. I'm a heaven sent instrument. My rhythmatic regimen navigates melodic notes for your soul and your mental. That's why I'm instrumental, vibrations is what I'm into.

Kanye West

#97. I gave up language for a while, and I started painting.And then I only listened to Miles Davis and other instrumental music to see how it felt to be without words.

Rosanne Cash

#98. Haida preferred to listen to instrumental music, chamber music, and vocal recordings. Music where the orchestral component was loud and prominent wasn't to his liking.

Haruki Murakami

#99. Confidence is instrumental to those climbing out of poverty.

Ann Cotton

#100. You look back, and it was important to bring back instrumental music, and it was great to be a part of that wave of instrumental rock music. And clearly it was something I was destined to do.

Stuart Hamm