Adams, John (1735-1826)
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry and music."

Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
"Music -- the greatest good that mortals know, and all of heaven we have below."

Aiken, Conrad (1889-1973)
"Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate; all that was once so beautiful is dead."

Alda, Alan (1936-)
"Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself."

Allen, Fred
"I play a musical instrument a little, but only for my own amazement."

Anderson, Ian
"A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children."

Andrews, Dr. Donald Hatch (1898-1978)
"Musical sound lies within the very hearts of the atoms."

Angelou, Maya (1928- )
"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."

Anon
"A great deal of musical talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage."

"A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune."

"Bach gave us God's Word; Mozart gave us God's Laughter; Beethoven gave us God's Fire. God gave us Music that we might pray without words." [from a German Opera House]

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

"Only when thou drinkest from the rivers of silence wilt thou learn to sing."

"The problem with reality is the lack of background music."

Aristotle (384-322 bce)
"Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young."

Armstrong, Louis (1901-1971)
"If you have to ask what it is you'll never really know." [on music]

Arnold, Malcolm (1921- )
"I write music because it is only possible to express the ideas and emotions I wish to express through the medium of music."

Auden, Wystan Hugh (1907-1971)
"No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible."

Auerbach, Berthold (1812-1882)
"Music washes away from the soul the dust of every day life."

Augustine, Saint (354-430)
"He who sings prays twice."

Babcock, Maltbie D.
"All nature sings, and rounds me rings, the music of the spheres."

Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750)
"There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself."

Bacon, Ernst (1898-1990)
"Singing is speech made musical, while dancing is the body made poetic."

Baker, Richard (1925- )
"The discovery of song and the creation of musical instruments both owed their origin to a human impulse which lies much deeper than conscious intention: the need for rhythm in life . . . the need is a deep one, transcending thought, and disregarded at our peril."

Barrie, Sir James Matthew (1860-1937)
"If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing."

Baryshnikov, Mikhail (1947- )
"The essence of all art is having pleasure giving pleasure."

Barzun, Jacques
"Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be, as it were, inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence."

Beecham, Sir Thomas (1879-1961)
"If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it's not going to achieve immortality."

Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827)
"I despise a world which does not feel that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."

"Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken."

"Music should strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears to the eyes of woman."

Belloc, Hilaire (1870-1953)
"It is the best of all worlds to make songs."

Bendner, Dr. Max
"Music may achieve the highest of all missions: she may be a bond between nations, races and states, who are strangers to one another in many ways; she may unite what is disunited, and bring peace to what is hostile."

Berlioz, Hector (1803-1869)
"Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection."

Bernstein, Leonard (1918-1990)
"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long."

"Life without music is unthinkable, music without life is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace."

"Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."

"The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another . . . and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world."

"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (475?-525?)
"Music is so naturally united with us that we cannot be free from it even if we so desired."

Borge, Victor (1909- )
"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people."

Boulez, Pierre (1925- )
"Music is . . . a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal."

Bowen, Catherine Drinker (1897-1973)
"Chamber music: a conversation between friends"

Brice, Fanny
"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?"

Britten, Benjamin (1913-1977)
"I have a very dread of becoming one of those artists who talk."

"It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain; of strength and of freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony."

Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
"For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres."

Browning, Robert (1812-1889)
"There is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music."

Burns, George
"I'd rather be a flop at show business than to be a success at something I didn't like."

Buscaglia, Leo
"Your talent is God's gift to you; what you do with it is your gift to God."

Busoni, Ferruccio (1866-1924)
"Come, follow me into the realm of music. Here is the iron fence which separates the earthly from the eternal. Have you undone the fetters and thrown them away? Now come. It is not as it was before when we stepped into a strange country; we soon learnt to know everything there and nothing surprised us any longer. Here there is no end to the astonishments, and yet from the beginning we feel it is homelike."

Butler, Samuel (1612-1680)
"Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule."

Cage, John (1912-1992)
"It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of 'culture.'"

"When we separate music from life we get art."

Cahn, Sammy (1913- )
"The popular song is America's greatest ambassador."

Callas, Maria (1923-1977)
"When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed its point."

Camus, Albert (1913-1960)
"Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason."

Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881)
"Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite."

Casals, Pablo (1876-1973)
"For those who do not love, music drives away hate. Music gives peace to the restless, and comforts the sorrowful. They who no longer know where to turn find new ways, and those who have despaired gain new confidence and love."

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616)
"Alas! All music jars when the soul's out of tune."

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel
"Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."

Cheever, John (1912-1982)
"Art is the triumph over chaos."

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1874-1936)
"Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist."

Chinese Proverb
"If thine enemy has wronged thee buy each of his children a drum."

Chittenden, Margaret
"Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing."

Claudel, Paul (1868-1955)
"Music is the soul of geometry."

Cocteau, Jean (1899-1963)
"All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it."

Cole, Nat King (1917-1965)
"Critics don't buy records. They get 'em free."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
"Swans sing before they die; 'twere no bad thing should some people die before they sing."

Combarieu, Jules
"Music is the art of thinking with sounds."

Confucius (551?-479? bce)
"Virtue is the strong stem of man's nature, and music is the blossoming of virtue."

Congreve, William (1670-1729)
"Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. I've read that things inanimate have moved, and, as with living souls, have been informed by magic numbers and persuasive sound."

Copland, Aaron (1900-1990)
"...how can one not be compelled and not be moved by the moral fervor and conviction of such a man? His finest works are the enactment of a triumph -- a triumph of affirmation in the face of the human condition. Beethoven is one of the great yea-sayers among creative artists; it is exhilarating to share his clear-eyed contemplation of the tragic sum of life. His music summons forth our better nature; in purely musical terms. Beethoven seems to be exhorting us to Be Noble, Be Strong, Be Great in Heart, yes, and Be Compassionate." [Copland on Music]

"To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable."

Cosby, Bill (1937- )
"Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes."

Coward, Sir Noel (1889-1973)
"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."

Cowper, William (1731-1800)

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
Book vi. Winter Walk at Noon. Line 1.

Crossman, E. Joseph
"Love is friendship set to music."

Cugat, Xavier (1900- )
"I would rather play 'Chiquita Banana' and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve."