Top 1200 Greatest Musician Quotes & Sayings

I don't wanna talk about Teo [Macero]. He's a helluva musician, a brilliant musician, but he's just not for me, that's all. I can elaborate on it, but I don't want to do that.

I was an independent musician for ten years before I became a musician for movies.

I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.

One musician listens to another musician, and you get inspired and then you do your thing, but it's yours.

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

Every musician that dies is the greatest ever when they die. I never heard a David Bowie record in my life. But for whatever reason, he's one of the greatest of all time now. You know why? 'Cause he's dead.

If you're a musician, you're a musician; you don't ever get that out of your bones.

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

Musician' is not a very respected title. I'm not a musician.

As a musician, basically the masses never thought I was a musician.

Music is my greatest love. If I could play an instrument I would be a musician.

My short answer would be that there is no greatest jazz musician of the century. Jazz, like any valid art form, finds its greatness in its expression of the human spirit, and, to me, this can’t be reduced to a contest.

Charlie Parker was the greatest individual musician that ever lived. Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments.

I have a musician friend who, after reading Mountains, told me, "When I read the book, I wanted to quit music altogether and become a doctor." I told him, "Do you really think you can be a better doctor than you are a musician? Nobody needs you as a lousy doctor. Just be the one-of-a-kind, brilliant musician you are, and divert your success somehow to benefit the poor." You can achieve so much more this way.

Most people define themselves by what they do - 'I'm a musician.' Then one day it occurred to me that I'm only a musician when I'm playing music - or writing music, or talking about music. I don't do that 24 hours a day. I'm also a father, a son, a husband, a citizen - I mean, when I go to vote, I'm not thinking of myself as 'a musician.'

He has a method that likens the musician to an athlete, so I do physical exercises designed to keep a musician in shape in order to perform the function, which is to play music.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

I'm always writing. And, I mean, I always counsel people when they call me a musician: I really do not have the skills of a musician. I really don't think like a musician, though I love music and I perform and sing.

Solomon was a musician and David was a musician, so it's a profession that I take seriously.

I didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwrit er. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.

I'm not a corny-ass booty freak! I'm the greatest musician of all-time.

I'm a musician, I always was a musician, and now I've got a song on the radio, so I'm definitely a musician.

I lived at the greatest time in the history of mankind to be a musician.

Well I'm a third-generation musician. My Grandfather's a musician and my father and mother were both musicians and so I'm a musician. It was just natural that I should be a musician 'cause I was born into the family.

I'd been trained as a classical musician, but also as a pop musician. My teacher made sure that everything was available.

The point is that the arts are important enough to have influenced the greatest minds and talents we know. Albert Einstein said that if he were not a physicist, he would probably be a musician.

I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.

Playing the Opry, when I get the opportunity - it's one of the coolest honors for any musician in any genre, but especially for a country musician.

The very greatest genius, after all, is not the greatest thing in the world, any more than the greatest city in the world is the country or the sky. It is the concentration of some of its greatest powers, but it is not the greatest diffusion of its might. It is not the habit of its success, the stability of its sereneness.

I'm a real musician's musician: I get really geeky on chords and arrangements.

I am a musician, but I'm another type of musician.

Do not categorize about music. You take each musician at the time and open yourself to that musician.

I'd rather be just a Korean musician as opposed to, you know, a K-Pop musician.

I was feeling privileged and self-conscious about my life as a musician, which feels self-absorbed. I can't help it, I am a musician. This is what I do.

Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.

Musicians from the beginning of time have been there to express the mood and the musical feelings in the air for whatever's going on in that particular culture. It's the greatest joy as a musician to be able to translate that, be part of something and watch the scenery around you.

I think I turned to writing really just to wake up in the morning and be a musician and to have something to do, and feel like a musician every day even if I wasn't working.

I always tell my students when you're going to be a jazz musician the first thing you've got to do is be a professional musician, and that means you have to feed yourself with the instrument.

I don't consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can't develop any further. But I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself. Take a musician like John Coltrane. He is a perfect musician, who can give expression to all the possibilities of his instrument. But he seems to have difficulty expressing original ideas on it. That is why he keeps looking for ideas in exotic places. At least I don't have that problem, because, like I say, I find my inspiration in myself.

I hold my time with the Black Crowes with the utmost respect and sincerest appreciation. It is a huge swath of my life’s body of work. I couldn’t be more proud of what we accomplished and deeply moved by the relationships people created and maintained with my music. That alone is the greatest honor of being a musician.

I didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwriter. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.

The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others. The greatest precept is continual awareness. The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything. The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways. The greatest magic is transmuting the passions. The greatest generosity is non-attachment. The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind. The greatest patience is humility. The greatest effort is not concerned with results. The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go. The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Overall, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give to the listener the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe... That's what I would like to do. I think that's one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do that in some way. The musician's is through his music.

To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.

I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful.

'Musician' is not a very respected title. I'm not a musician.

As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too.

I think for a classical musician the goal is the same as an electronic musician. A very good professional classical musician must not think about technique.

I'm no fan of jam bands. You can take your Gov't Mule, your Phish, your Rusted Root. But Derek Trucks is a special musician - perhaps the greatest slide guitarist who ever lived.

The greatest thing about doing this movie was that Chris and I both were involved in folk music in the '60s. I had a group, but I don't think it was at the same level as Chris, because he's an amazing musician.

The greatest masters are the greatest apprentices as well; they are not only greatest givers but also greatest takers.

My dad is my biggest influence on me as a musician, even though he's not a musician.

There's no such thing as the greatest album ever. There's no greatest book, greatest human, greatest movie. At a push, the closest record to perfection I know is What's Going On by Marvin Gaye or The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds but possibly because they are widely recognized as such.

The sound was my greatest concern. There were certain difficulties getting used to the way every musician can hear his or herself, the way each of them relates to the musician in the next seat.

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs.

I've always thought about myself as somewhat of a folk musician. I just write words. I don't think I'm even a musician. I don't play a lot of instruments, not really a soloist or anything.

My grandfather is a musician, my son is a musician and a singer. My mother played the piano too.

I'm kind of a terrible musician. I'm a very functional musician. I play just about every instrument in a band setting, functionally. But I should not be taking solos.