100 Inspirational Musician Quotes to Ignite Your Passion for Music

"Music can change the world because it can change people."

- Bono

"Music can change the world because it can change people"

- Bono

"The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between"

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music."

- Billy Joel

"Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music."

- Jimi Hendrix

"I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadow; if I fail, or if I succeed at least I did as I believe."

- Whitney Houston

"If you play music with passion and love and honesty, then it will nourish your soul, heal your wounds and make your life worth living. Music is its own reward."

- Sting

"Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy."

- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts."

- Billy Joel

"Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind."

- Johannes Brahms

"Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets."

- Ludwig van Beethoven

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

- Leonard Bernstein

"Music is a high revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"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."

- Alban Berg

"I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well."

- J.S. Bach

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."

- Frederic Chopin

"To send light into the darkness of men's hearts – such is the duty of the artist."

- Robert Schumann

"The only love affair I have ever had was with music."

- Maurice Ravel

"A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one."

- Dmitri Shostakovich

"Music is the social act of communication among people, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there is."

- Malcolm Arnold

"It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me."

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me - like food or water."

- Ray Charles

"You can’t knock on opportunity’s door and not be ready."

- Bruno Mars

"Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you’re doing. If you’re not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it."

- Aretha Franklin

"Don't play what's there, play what's not there"

- Miles Davis

"Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend."

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart."

- Pablo Casals

"Life is a lot like jazz…it’s best when you improvise."

- George Gershwin

"Music begins where the possibilities of language end."

- Jean Sibelius

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"Music is the transporter. The carrier. It carries the inspiration, the message, the healing."

- Carlos Santana

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

- Victor Hugo

"I've experienced tons of failure. I've been making music for 30 years, and I'd say failure and success have happened in equal measure."

- Moby

"It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people."

- Stevie Nicks

"Don't let your music be defined by genre labels"

- Bonobo

"Music was a vector we wanted to build a universe around"

- Thomas Bangalter, Daft Punk

"As a DJ, people expect a certain sound and a certain danceability for the music. As a producer, I really like to let go of any rules that may exist"

- Armin van Buuren

"No one worries about genre when they're dancing. They're not asking themselves, 'Is this song a dubstep song?'"

- Skrillex

"If you want to get unusual results, work fast and work cheap, because there's more of a chance that you'll get somewhere that nobody else did"

- Brian Eno

"I've spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn't reach the heart."

- Hans Zimmer

"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."

- Bob Marley

"Where words fail, music speaks."

- Hans Christian Andersen

"The true beauty of music is that it connects people. It carries a message, and we, the musicians, are the messengers."

- Roy Ayers

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between."

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

- Berthold Auerbach

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

- Maya Angelou

"I believe musicians have a duty, a responsibility to reach out, to share your love or pain with others."

- James Taylor

"Despite everything, no one can dictate who you are to other people."

- Prince

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

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"Don't be a prisoner of your own style!"

- Armin van Buuren

"If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow."

- Beyoncé

"Just keep going. You never know how far you can go."

- Gunna

"Music is the universal language of mankind"

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work."

- George Gershwin

"I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet."

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"We’re musicians. We make music for a living. It’s that simple. Nothing else matters."

- Eddie Van Halen

"Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art."

- Claude Debussy

"Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them."

- Louis Armstrong

"If music be the food of love, play on."

- William Shakespeare

"A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?"

- Dave Grohl

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

- Leonard Bernstein

"I don't have to do things just to please people. It's okay to do what I love because what I love, my fans love. And they're really the only ones that should matter."

- Nicki Minaj

"I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones."

- John Cage

"One thing I’ve learned is that I’m not the owner of my talent; I’m the manager of it."

- Madonna

"There was no one near to confuse me, so I was forced to become original."

- Franz Joseph Haydn

"Imagination creates reality."

- Richard Wagner

"Real art is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind, and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possible is a benefactor of humanity."

- Zoltan Kodaly

"And if you don't believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light."

- Chris Cornell

"Music is the best means we have of digesting time."

- W. H. Auden

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels."

- Thomas Carlyle

"Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die."

- Paul Simon

"Music is the soundtrack of your life."

- Dick Clark

"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."

- Plato

"Music is the shorthand of emotion."

- Leo Tolstoy

"Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life."

- Jean Paul

"Technology is neutral, but it all depends on the way we use it."

- Jean-Michel Jarre

"When you play, never mind who listens to you"

- Robert Schumann

"Every track starts with a single, strong idea"

- Hannes Bieger

"For every hour of recording, have two hours of laughter in the studio"

- Quincy Jones

"Less is more"

- Rone

"There's a tremendous power in using the least amount of information to get a point across."

- Rick Rubin

"In the right context, you can make ugly sounds (…) feel right at home."

- Flume

"The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious"

- Lester Bangs

"I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wish to make them better."

- Georg Frideric Handel

"To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time."

- Leonard Bernstein

"To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better."

- Giuseppe Verdi

"So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it."

- Aaron Copland

"I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way."

- Gustav Mahler

"I frequently hear music in the heart of noise."

- George Gershwin

"Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal."

- Igor Stravinsky

"Music, being identical with heaven, isn't a thing of momentary thrills, or even hourly ones. It's a condition of eternity."

- Gustav Holst

"Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity."

- Giacchino Rossini

"There is only one real happiness in life and that is the happiness of creating."

- Frederick Delius

"In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of."

- Robert Schumann

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."

- John Cage

"Every great inspiration is but an experiment."

- Charles Ives

"I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery."

- Karlheinz Stockhausen

"When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love."

- Franz Schubert

"Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements."

- Giacomo Puccini

"I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices."

- Sergei Prokofiev

"There is nothing like practice."

- Alan Hovhaness

"In love's godlike breathing, there's the innermost aspect of the universe."

- Alexander Scriabin

"Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words."

- Franz Liszt

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

- Aaron Copland

"In music, as I find myself forever saying, things don't get better or worse: they evolve and transform themselves."

- Luciano Berio

"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it."

- Igor Stravinsky

"Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm."

- Robert Schumann

"Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including and particularly, the coordination between man and time."

- Igor Stravinsky

"People have to go through trials and tribulations to get where they at. Do your thing - continue to rock it - because obviously, God wants you here."

- Kendrick Lamar

"Music is a form of prayer."

- Toru Takemitsu

"I've never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down."

- Virgil Thomson

"Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way."

- Gustav Mahler

"An artist's sphere of influence is the world."

- Carl Maria von Weber

"The end of all good music is to affect the soul."

- Claudio Monteverdi

"Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second."

- Maurice Ravel

"Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love."

- Hector Berlioz

"The wise musicians are those who play what they can master."

- Duke Ellington

"What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."

- Bob Dylan

"I feel like this: Whatever is in your path and in your heart, you need to do."

- J. Cole

"In order to find yourself, who you really are, you got to be with yourself; you got to hang out with yourself."

- Post Malone

"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted."

- John Lennon

"Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen."

- Amy Winehouse

"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."

- Johann Sebastian Bach

"Tell me, I forget, show me, I remember, involve me, I understand."

- Carl Orff

"Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth."

- Charles Ives

"I’m trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It’s so easy to get turned."

- Elvis Presley

"Silences between movements are employed only in order to bring the opposing duo to the fore."

- Elliott Carter

"Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist."

- Franz Liszt

"I adore art… when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear."

- Giuseppe Verdi

"I'm a mirror. If you're cool with me, I'm cool with you, and the exchange starts. What you see is what you reflect. If you don't like what you see, then you've done something. If I'm standoffish, that's because you are."

- Jay-Z

"Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs."

- Edgard Varese

"The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety."

- Felix Mendelssohn

"Music is a pastime, a relaxation from more serious occupations."

- Alexander Borodin

"The best musicians are people who never considered themselves to be artists or musicians."

- Aphex Twin

"Music is the strongest form of magic."

- Marilyn Manson

"I don't make music for eyes. I make music for ears."

- Adele

"Music should be your escape."

- Missy Elliot

"I try to decorate my imagination as much as I can."

- Franz Schubert

"As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note."

- George Bizet

"If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art."

- Arnold Schoenberg

"Competitions are for horses, not artists."

- Bela Bartok

"Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity."

- Modest Mussorgsky

"The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping."

- Benjamin Britten

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."

- Louis Hector Berlioz

"It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music."

- Ralph Vaughan Williams

"I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer."

- Richard Strauss

"Everything lives and lasts by the inner necessity of its being, by its own nature’s need."

- Richard Wagner

"The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest."

- Erik Satie

"You never know the plan. You never know what's going to happen. We are not even promised tomorrow. I just try to focus on one day at a time."

- Morgan Wallen

"Without loyalty, you won't accomplish anything."

- YoungBoy Never Broke Again

"If I ever found a place where I belonged, that in itself would be an identity crisis to me."

- Mitski

"I always said God was against art and I still believe it."

- Edward Elgar

"Art is not only about angst."

- John Corigliano

"I believe nothing happens by mistake. You know, the universe has a divine plan. That sounds dramatic."

- Lana Del Rey

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought"

- Anonymous

"Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong"