Inspiring Musical Quotes to Ignite Your Passion

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Where words fail, music speaks."

- Hans Christian Andersen

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

- Berthold Auerbach

"Love is friendship set to music."

- Jackson Pollock

"Music can change the world."

- Ludwig van Beethoven

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

- Steve Jobs

"A great song should lift your heart, warm the soul and make you feel good."

- Colbie Caillat

"Music in the soul can be heard by the universe."

- Lao Tzu

"Music isn’t just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It’s a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it’s joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven."

- Orson Scott Card

"Where words leave off, music begins."

- Heinrich Heine

"Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Music is life itself."

- Louis Armstrong

"People haven’t always been there for me, but music always has."

- Taylor Swift

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

- William Shakespeare

"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything."

- Plato

"Music is the universal language of mankind."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Music is my religion."

- Jimi Hendrix

"Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life. It’s uplifting, it’s encouraging, it’s strengthening."

- Aretha Franklin

"Music can heal the wounds which medicine cannot touch."

- Debasish Mridha

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

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Without music, life would be a blank to me."

- Jane Austen

"The more you love music, the more music you love."

- Tom Moon

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

- Bono

"Music is love in search of a word."

- Sidney Lanier

"Success in the music industry isn’t something that you wait for or hope for. It is something that you create, day after day."

- Simon S. Tam

"Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife."

- Kahlil Gibran

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

- Aldous Huxley

"Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise."

- Victor Hugo

"Scratch that this is not a moment, it's the movement."

- Hamilton

"Love doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints, it takes and it takes and it takes and we keep loving anyway."

- Hamilton

"Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new. Give us more to see."

- Sunday in the Park with George

"Everyone deserves the chance to fly, and if I’m flying solo at least I’m flying free"

- Wicked

"You won't see me begging, I'm not taking my bow. Can't hurt me, can't stop me, it's not the end. You haven't seen the last of me."

- The Cher Show

"There's only us, There's only this. Forget regret-- or life is yours to miss. No other road, No other way. No day but today."

- Rent

"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."

- Thomas Carlyle

"I am inimitable, I am an original."

- Hamilton

"Never let ‘em tell you who you ought to be. Just be. With dignity. Celebrate yourself triumphantly."

- Kinky Boots

"Unlimited, my future is unlimited."

- Wicked

"One thing's universal. Life's no dress rehearsal. So why not make some waves before it's through. Go BIG, or you've blown it. It's time that you own it. Let's make it clear that tonight belongs to you!"

- The Prom

"That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons."

- Dave Grohl

"I am the one the one thing in life I can control."

- Hamilton

"Never let 'em tell you who you ought to be. Just be. With dignity. Celebrate yourself triumphantly."

- Kinky Boots

"Day after day, we find the will to find our way/ Knowing that the darkest skies will someday see the sun."

- Next to Normal

"Being true to yourself never goes out of style."

- Legally Blonde

"There is no future, there is no past. I live this moment as my last."

- Shadia Ashiru

"With the chance we've been given, we've gotta be driven as hell!"

- Legally Blonde

"There's a million things I haven't done, but just you wait."

- Hamilton

"Music… is the only real religion that is worth devoting your soul to. It is the last remnant of the primal scream, the funeral dirge, and the wedding march. It is the light that keeps me out of the shadows, and it is the reason my immortal soul is not in dire straits."

- Corey Taylor

"Music is everywhere. It’s in the air between us, waiting to be sung."

- David Levithan

"If everyone started off the day singing, just think how happy they'd be."

- Lauren Myracle

"My music isn’t just music—it’s medicine."

- Kanye West

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

- Pablo Casals

"By staying true to your art, your vision, you can create something that did not exist otherwise, something beautiful, joyful, powerful and draped in meaning."

- Mark Rabideau

"Life and love go on, let the music play."

- Johnny Cash

"Once again, she was free. Once again, she found peace. It was music that freed her soul from the dungeon of her mind."

- Wiss Auguste

"An artist’s musical experience is as unique as his or her life experience; finding a way of capturing that unique set of experiences and using one’s skills to turn them into meaningful art is the path to being an extraordinary musician in the 21st century."

- Judd Greenstein

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

- Bob Marley

"Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends."

- Alphonse de Lamartine

"You can cage the singer but not the song."

- Harry Belafonte

"Music is the emotional life of most people."

- Leonard Cohen

"Life is one grand, sweet song so start the music."

- Ronald Reagan

"Music is a weapon in the war against unhappiness."

- Jason Mraz

"Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvelous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man."

- Frédéric Chopin

"Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words."

- Robert G. Ingersoll

"Music is the tool to express life—and all that makes a difference."

- Herbie Hancock

"Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies."

- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

"Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours."

- Elton John

"The world’s most famous and popular language is music."

- PSY

"Music is the shorthand of emotion."

- Leo Tolstoy

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent."

- Victor Hugo

"Even if you can’t sing well, sing. Sing to yourself. Sing in the privacy of your home. But sing."

- Rebbe Nachman

"Music is what tells us that the human race is greater than we realize."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without."

- Confucius

"Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering."

- Steve Maraboli

"Music is healing. Music holds things together."

- Prince

"Softly, deftly, music shall caress you. Hear it, feel it, secretly possess you."

- Andrew Lloyd Webber

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

- Roy Ayers

"Music doesn't get in. Music is already in. Music simply uncovers what is there, makes you feel emotions that you didn't necessarily know you had inside you and runs around waking them all up. A rebirth of sorts."

- Matt Haig

"He took his pain and turned it into something beautiful. Into something that people connect to. And that's what good music does. It speaks to you. It changes you."

- Hannah Harrington

"Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide."

- Pat Conroy

"Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common."

- Sarah Dessen

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: ‘The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.’"

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens."

- Maria von Trapp

"Music is very spiritual, it has the power to bring people together."

- Edgar Winter

"My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary."

- Martin Luther

"Words make you think. Music makes you feel. A song makes you feel a thought."

- Yip Harburg

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

- Billy Joel

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

- Leonard Bernstein

"You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions."

- Steve Case

"Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune."

- Jim Rohn

"You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself."

- Seth Godin

"Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can't."

- Johnny Depp

"Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe."

- Douglas Adams

"The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with."

- Bruce Springsteen

"There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music."

- George Eliot

"I've found that no matter what life throws at me, music softens the blow."

- Bryce W. Anderson

"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence."

- Robert Fripp

"Music is an outburst of the soul."

- Frederick Delius

"Can a mere song change a people's minds? I doubt that it is so. But a song can infiltrate your heart and the heart may change your mind."

- Elvis Costello

"I’ve always said music should make you laugh, make you cry or make you think."

- Kenny Rogers

"If Music is a Place – then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple."

- Vera Nazarian

"Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune."

- Thomas Fuller

"Music kept me off the streets and out of trouble and gave me something that was mine that no one could take away from me."

- Eddie van Halen

"The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with – nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life."

- Rob Sheffield

"Some people have lives; some people have music."

- John Green

"A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence."

- Leopold Stokowski

"He who sings frightens away his ills."

- Miguel de Cervantes

"Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody."

- Joshua Logan

"Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones."

- Keith Richards

"Music is feeling. You can try to verbalize it. It really just hits you or it doesn’t."

- Gene Simmons

"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music."

- Albert Einstein

"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

- Igor Stravinsky

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

- Paul Simon

"If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music."

- Gustav Mahler

"Life, he realized, was much like a song. In the beginning, there is mystery, in the end, there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile."

- Nicholas Sparks

"Music is powerful. As people listen to it, they can be affected. They respond."

- Ray Charles

"People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It’s like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song."

- Michael Jackson

"I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation."

- Criss Jami

"Or music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts."

- T.S. Eliot

"We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."

- Arthur O’Shaughnessy

"Music is the soundtrack to every good and bad time we will ever have."

- Alex Gaskarth

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

- George Gershwin

"When you're happy, you enjoy the music but when you're sad, you understand the lyrics."

- Frank Ocean

"Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh."

- Mark Twain

"You can’t stop my happiness, because I like the way I am."

- HairSpray

"We could have been anything that we wanted to be, and it’s not too late to change."

- Bugsy Malone

"When you choose to lose yourself, who knows what you might find."

- Aladdin the Musical

"You should never take more than you give."

- Lion King

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

- Armin van Buuren

"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

"Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there."

- Miles Davis

"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

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

- Rick Rubin

"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

"We're all damaged, we're all frightened, we're all freaks- and that's alright."

- Heathers

"It isn't where I am, it's only where I go from here."

- Amelie

"I've got to be where my spirit can run free, got to find my corner of the sky."

- Pippin

"Takes a little patience, takes a little time, a little perseverance, and a little uphill climb."

- Dear Evan Hansen

"Courage is your claim to fame, when hero is your middle name."

- SpongeBob SquarePants

"Courage cannot erase our fear, courage is when we face our fear."

- Newsies

"See how the world could be, in spite of the way that it is."

- Hadestown

"Sometimes what's meant to break you, makes you brave."

- Mean Girls

"Music is not take it or leave it; Music is life or death!"

- Joss Stirling

"If you talk bad about country music, it's like saying bad things about my momma. Them's fightin' words."

- Dolly Parton

"Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words."

- Elie Wiesel

"When we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present."

- Alan Watts

"Music should be your escape."

- Missy Elliott

"For me, there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall."

- Eric Clapton

"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."

- Henry Ford

"Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory."

- Oscar Wilde

"If you’ve lost your faith in love and music, then the end won’t be long."

- Pete Doherty

"Music is the strongest form of magic."

- Marilyn Manson

"There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard."

- Sun Tzu

"I believe that a person's taste in music tells you a lot about them. In some cases, it tells you everything you need to know."

- Leila Sales

"If I cannot fly, let me sing."

- Stephen Sondheim

"Why not just live in the moment, especially if it has a good beat?"

- Goldie Hawn

"Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music."

- Marcel Marceau

"Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking."

- Nina Simone

"Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway."

- Emory Austin

"I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things."

- Tom Waits

"There are two means of refuge from the misery of life—music and cats."

- Albert Schweitzer

"Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music."

- Sergei Rachmaninov

"My ambition was to live like music."

- Mary Gaitskill

"Music should be an essential part of every analysis."

- Carl Jung

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

- Aaron Copland

"Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn."

- Charlie Parker

"A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."

- Chinese Proverb

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on."

- John Keats

"Music is the soundtrack of your life."

- Dick Clark

"If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week."

- Charles Darwin

"I’ve always thought people would find a lot more pleasure in their routines if they burst into song at significant moments."

- John Barrowman

"Music is a great natural high and a great natural escape."

- Shania Twain

"Music replays the past memories, awaken our forgotten worlds and make our minds travel."

- Michael Bassey Johnson

"Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing."

- John Erskine

"How is it that music can, without words, evoke our laughter, our fears, our highest aspirations?"

- Jane Swan

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

- Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

"Music is the only thing I’ve ever known that doesn’t have any rules at all."

- Josh Homme

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."

- Frank Zappa

"The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable."

- H. Auden

"Sure, there are little victories here and there that may seem like lucky breaks, but luck is simply when preparation meets opportunity."

- Ari Herstand

"If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing."

- J.M. Barrie

"If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together."

- Richard Nixon

"Most people die with their music still locked up inside them."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"The only truth is music."

- Jack Kerouac

"I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work."

- Thomas Edison

"Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie."

- John Milton

"Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration."

- Thomas Edison

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

- Duke Ellington

"Country music is three chords and the truth."

- Harlan Howard

"Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory."

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Music gives color to the air of the moment."

- Karl Lagerfeld

"Don't stress. Relax. Let life roll off your back. Except for death and maybe taxes, everything in life is only for now."

- Avenue Q

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

- Lester Bangs

"Yesterday was plain awful, but that’s not now, that’s then."

- Annie

"Less is more."

- Rone

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

- Aphex Twin

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

- Jean-Michel Jarre

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

- Flume

"Always deliver more than expected."

- Larry Page

"Curiosity is the most important skill an entrepreneur can have. No matter where you are in a business you have to constantly challenge your assumptions and ask questions of your customers, your team, your partners, and most importantly yourself. Question your wins, losses, and everything in between."

- Joe Conyers

"The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be."

- Pete Seeger

"Those who wish to sing always find a song."

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

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