A Quote by Ben Bagdikian

Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St Matthew Passion on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.

Ben Bagdikian

Quote Author

Ben Bagdikian
American - Journalist
January 26, 1920 - March 11, 2016

In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I had simply been inspired by Arthur Godfrey (40's) and Ukulele Ike and Cliff Edwards (20's). In there day, they were huge in this country. I bought Godfrey's book "You Too Can Learn To Play Ukulele" and taught myself. It's a very romantic instrument. You can take it on a canoe.

Tiny Tim

Growing up, the ukulele was always a respected instrument. It's a big part of our culture. It wasn't until I started traveling outside of Hawaii that I realized people didn't really consider the ukulele to be a real instrument.

Jake Shimabukuro

I think my first instrument was a ukulele that they gave me. I used to know how to play that pretty well.

Don Henley

Sometimes you can press a little bit and you're trying to do too much and you're trying too hard. You want to win so bad and you want to help the team so badly that you end up trying too much instead of letting the play come to you.

Ed Belfour

If you go to a second-rate place, and you are first-rate, it is very difficult to do first-rate work because you do not get that critical feedback you need for first-rate work on a daily basis.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

Don't make your audience play Jeopardy. Giving your answer before asking the question puts your audience at a disadvantage. It will also reveal your biases. Make it clear what question you are trying to answer first. Then allow your audience to engage in answering the question too.

John Fairclough

I was hearing music in my head and trying to play it on the clarinet, but it didn't match.' Then, literally the first day, it did with the saxophone. I was like, 'Oh man, that's what I've been trying to do; this is what it's supposed to sound like.'

Kamasi Washington

Right now I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, 'cause I don't want to sit around on my backside all day. If I'm gonna do that I'll be a newspaper reporter.

Joe Paterno

I like to use my voice as an instrument and just play along with the music. That's really how I tend to my voice. The content usually comes after or during that process of just trying to be an instrument.

Lecrae

The ukulele totally fits that whole hipster community or whatever you want to call it, but then at the same time it works great in nursing homes where senior citizens get together and play, and then as the traditional Hawaiian instrument with people doing the Hula and strumming the ukulele and singing.

Jake Shimabukuro

I never like to play for myself, and that is why I don't own a grand piano. To play for yourself is like looking at yourself in a mirror. I like to practice; that is to work at a task. But to play there must be an audience. New things happen when you play for an audience. You don't know what will occur. You make discoveries with the music, and it is always the first time. It is an exchange, a communion.

Hephzibah Menuhin

I believe that trying to deal with Donald Trump is like trying to play three-card monte in Central Park: it's not going to work out.

Tom Steyer

It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits - like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits - involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding - inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable.