Top 188 Quotes & Sayings by Miles Davis

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

I have to change. It's like a curse.

Space music'd be really something... but they don't have no gravity up there. You couldn't have no downbeat!

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

He comes in on the beat and plays on top of the beat. I think when Prince makes love, he hears drums instead of Ravel.

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

Prince might be bringing that low sound back, because he has that double bass.

Prince got some Marvin Gaye and Jimi Hendrix and Sly in him, also, even Little Richard. He's a mixture of all those guys and Duke Ellington.

Prince is from the school of James Brown, and I love James Brown because of all the great rhythms he plays.

Jimi Hendrix came from the blues, like me. We understood each other right away because of that. He was a great blues guitarist.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

It was Jimi Hendrix that I first got into when Betty Mabry turned me on to him.

You'd be surprised. Drummers ape each other. The way every rock n' roll record sounds like something else but not all together. Everything other drummers play, if you're playing drums, they all hear.

For me, music and life are all about style.

When you do anything too long, you either wear it out or lose interest.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

The music I was really listening to in 1968 was James Brown, the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix, and a new group... Sly and the Family Stone, led by Sly Stewart from San Francisco.

I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.

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

When I'm playing, I'm never through. It's unfinished. I like to find a place to leave for someone else to finish it. That's where the high comes in.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.

I'll play it first and figure out what it's called later.

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play.

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money.

In other words, an instrument should be an extension of you; it's supposed to sound like you - the way you walk, the way you dress, you know.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.

You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.

My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

Music is the framework around the silence.

To keep creating you have to be about change.