Philosophy And Music Quotes & Sayings

A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy. — Alan Watts

I'm trap in marriage with gangsta rhyme and my street life. — Kjiva

I am adrift. At 21, penniless in a world of plausible excuses, I am alone with my goals. These are difficult years, and if anything loving lay ahead I was already paying a large enough price. At my lowest in these years of signing on, I do not fit in anywhere with the family philosophy, and these days set the tempo of the times- even for the days when the sun re-enters the room. Travestied or not, you must just get through it. — Morrissey

Music expresses feeling, that is to say, gives shape and habitation to feeling, not in space but in time. To the extent that music has a history that is more than a history of its formal evolution, our feelings must have a history too. Perhaps certain qualities of feeling that found expression in music can be recorded by being notated on paper, have become so remote that we can no longer inhabit them as feelings, can get a grasp of them only after long training in the history and philosophy of music, the philosophical history of music, the history of music as a history of the feeling soul. — J.M. Coetzee

If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator
the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts. — Herbert Marcuse

Music fills the soul with divine beauty of pure love and life. — Debasish Mridha

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. — John Steinbeck

The world-traveler must, on the one hand, be ready (and actually seek) to visit a tribe in the Solomon Islands or stay with Tibetan nomads; on the other hand, he has to be prepared, when it is required, to wear his suit to attend a classical music concert in a big metropolis. Just as an important part of exploring Brazil is to visit its shantytowns, it is an indispensable part of understanding the French culture to eat at a gourmet restaurant in Paris. — Nicos Hadjicostis

Music is the language of the soul, the voice of the heart, and a message from the eternity. — Debasish Mridha

The music of all the different media of life-memories, images, feeling-tones, poetic-musical connotations of phrasing-is kaleidoscopic and doesn't repeat itself or recur. -People who think they are trapped in a river of regularized and ever-repeating time are merely the victims of their own ordinarizing minds that have elaborated for them a prison-cell of everydayness. The fountains of time, history, life, inspiration, etc. are fresh every instant, if one knows how to grasp them with some finesse: every instant within natural, historical, and personal time is unique. — Kenny Smith

When I was looking at the moon, I saw your eyes looking at me. I felt lights of love softly touching me, in the silence I heard your sweet music of joy, and then I got lost in your love. — Debasish Mridha

I enjoy the healing music and touch of love, touching my heart and soul when I give it away. — Debasish Mridha

I believe that man must learn to live without those consolations called religious, which is own intelligence must by now have told him belong to the childhood of the race. Philosophy can really give us nothing permanent to believe either; it is too rich in answers, each canceling out the rest. The quest for Meaning is foredoomed. Human life 'means' nothing. But this is not to say that it is not worth living. What does a Debussy Arabesque 'mean,' or a rainbow or a rose? A man delights in all of these, knowing himself to be no more
a wisp of music and a haze of dreams dissolving against the sun. Man has only his own two feet to stand on, his own human trinity to see him through: Reason, Courage, and Grace. And the first plus the second equals the third. — Peter De Vries

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody.
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me? — The Beatles

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning — Plato

Sometimes we focus too much on the lyrics that we forget to dance to the music. And sometimes we dance to the music and don't listen to the lyrics. Let the rhythm guide you. Let the lyrics inspire you. — Alexa Anderson

The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart. — Noah Levine

Art, music, and philosophy are merely poignant examples of what we might have been had not the priests and traders gotten hold of us. — George Carlin

Philosophy is the song of conscience and music the of thoughts. — Debasish Mridha

With type as with philosophy, music and food, it is better to have a little of the best than to be swamped with the derivative, the careless, the routine. — Robert Bringhurst

Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today's silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society. — Tyler Cowen

The Greeks' sculpture and athletics celebrated the human form, their literature and music human passion, their discourse and philosophy human reason. In — Steven Pressfield

Since hip hop emerged from the South Bronx in the 1970s, it has become an international, multi-billion-dollar phenomenon. It has grown to encompass more than just rap music. Hip hop has created a culture that incorporates ethnicity, art, politics, fashion, technology and urban life." This debunks the widely accepted argument that the genre is inherently divisive. With so many factors converging to create such an intricate, informative and multi-faceted genre, whose history and impact have bridged barriers between artist and society, it is not too complicated an endeavor to understand that its relevance repudiates its notorious reputation. — Carlos Wallace

You need to make the music strong, and the philosophy behind the music has to be solid. What the music exudes, what it emits, has to be very strong. It's your thinking that brings you things in life. Part of my philosophy to exceed starts right there. — David S. Ware

Kindness is the music that softens every heart and fills it with ineffable joy. — Debasish Mridha

Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. — James Burke

Music is the primordial language of life. That is why we love it so much. Actually every animal can hear and understand music better than we do. — Debasish Mridha

Philosophy is the music of a judgmental mind and imaginative heart. — Debasish Mridha

Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature. — Thomas Sowell

You meet somebody at the seashore on a vacation and have a wonderful time together. Or in a corner at a party, while the glasses clink and somebody beats on a piano, you talk with a stranger whose mind seems to whet and sharpen your own and with whom a wonderful new vista of ideas is spied. Or you share some intense or painful experience with somebody, and discover a deep communion. Then afterward you are sure that when you meet again, the gay companion will give you the old gaiety, the brilliant stranger will stir your mind from its torpor, the sympathetic friend will solace you with the old communion of spirit. But something happens, or almost always happens, to the gaiety, the brilliance, the communion. You remember the individual words from the old language you spoke together , but you have forgotten the grammar. You remember the steps of the dance, but the music isn't playing any more. So there you are. — Robert Penn Warren

Life is a song. Your thoughts are the music. Now play beautiful music and sing a wonderful song. — Debasish Mridha

Hip hop music (and the entire category) is one of few that unite fans of all colors, races, religions, socio-economic backgrounds, ages and genders. — Carlos Wallace

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was walking down the street with my friend and he said 'I hear music,' as though there's any other way to take it in. 'You're not special. That's how I receive it too ... I tried to taste it, but it did not work.' — Mitch Hedberg

The '60s weren't my cup of tea. I never bought that philosophy that, you know, we're all brothers and that'll solve everything. And I never believed that music dictated the times. I always thought it reflected them. — Phil Everly

This guy! I plead the fifth. This guy is nuts."
- Eminem
"Dope questions, man. Very insightful, very thoughtful."
- Guru (Gang Starr)
"You like a Psychiatrist or some shit? This shit is just coming out but go ahead."
- Mary J. Blige
"Definitely a real interview! Digging deep up in there, man. Not afraid to ask questions!"
- K-Ci Hailey (Jodeci)
"The Wizard asked me for a copy of your magazine."
- Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (Daft Punk)
"You didn't wear your glasses and you haven't carried your hearing aid. What else is wrong with you?"
- Bushwick Bill
"Peace and blessing, Brother Harris. Thank you for inspiring my words. Keep 'yo balance."
- Erykah Badu
"Can I see that pen?"
- Bobby Brown
"What else do you want to know? Talk to me."
- Aaliyah — Harris Rosen

We grown-up people think that we appreciate music, but if we realized the sense that an infant has brought with it of appreciating sound and rhythm, we would never boast of knowing music. The infant is music itself. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Through music I've discovered other philosophies. Buddhism in particular is one that has always - whenever I've studied it and read about it, it's just been so true to me. And I do try to take some practices of that into my daily life. Whether that's meditating or trying to see the world from that perspective. — Joan Osborne

The assignment of meanings [in music] is a shifting, kaleidoscopic play, probably below the threshold of consciousness, certainly outside the pale of discursive thinking. The imagination that responds to music is personal and associative and logical, tinged with affect, tinged with bodily rhythm, tinged with dream, but concerned with a wealth of formulations for its wealth of wordless knowledge, its whole knowledge of emotional and organic experience, of vital impulse, balance, conflict, the ways of living and dying and feeling. — Susanne K. Langer

Let us dance with passion. Our hearts will be dancing with joy and the magic of the music. — Debasish Mridha

Even in the physical world, all that cannot be caught in the modern science is collectively neglected, and its nonexistence "objectively" avowed. It is as if an audience of deaf people at a concert testified together that they did not hear any music and considered the unanimity of their opinion as a proof of its objectivity. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Music is one of those things that is constantly going in my head all the time. It's sort of like the evolution and creation of doing food, or my philosophy about wine. It's always beating in my head, so it keeps the spirit moving. — Emeril Lagasse

Music is the language of love, nature, and eternity. — Debasish Mridha

It is not unusual now to hear religion and humanism spoken of as if they were opposed, even antagonistic. But humanism clearly rested on the idea that people have souls, and that they have certain obligations to them, and certain pleasures in them, which arise from their refinement or their expression in art or in admirable or striking conduct, or which arise from finding other souls expressed in music or philosophy or philanthropy or revolution. — Marilynne Robinson

In the center of your being there is a fountain of music and that is your love. — Debasish Mridha

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. — Bob Dylan

A tree sings to us with her beauty and her love. It is our responsibility to listen to her music. — Debasish Mridha

Music and art and philosophy are ultimately based on the premise that this man on his tractor, and these pigs, and the swarms of bees that fertilise the crops, will all continue to do what they do. — Alexander McCall Smith

You can't teach anyone. You can't tell anyone. That's the thing you have to sit down and experience in order for it to mean anything. You can't intellectualize it. It's like why movies are cool. It's a combination of pictures and design and acting and music can create an experience that is outside of the experience that you can actually have in reality, which gets to my motion picture philosophy. People are like, 'aren't you trying to make the movies as real as you can?' — Zack Snyder

Michael Bloomfield was the antithesis of a collector ... he didn't care how old a guitar was; all he wanted was something that sounded good when played it ... and he cared nothing about the collectibility of an instrument ... his philosophy was "A good player can make any guitar sound good" ... to Michael, a guitar was just a tool ... — Nick Gravenites

The old man slowly raised himself from the piano stool, fixed those cheerful blue eyes piercingly and at the same time with unimaginable friendliness upon him, and said: Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing. I hope you and I shall remain friends. Perhaps you too will learn how to make fugues, Joseph. — Hermann Hesse

You never know what will spark a student's interest and feed the flame of learning. For me, all subjects are connected: writing, reading, science, art, music, math, social studies. By presenting myself as a writer with wide ranging passions - for astronomy, volcanology, art, music, history, and community service - I hope to inspire not only budding writers but also budding scientists, artists, activists... — Elizabeth Rusch

Music can touch and heal that secret wound of the soul which nothing else can reach. — Debasish Mridha

You might call them the icing on "life's cake," but music, laughter and the enjoyment of eating are the toppings that flavor everyday living. These added accents or accessories do spice up the cake. If served without, life would be rather bland! — Wes Adamson

We the undersigned, intend to establish an instruction and training institution which differs from the common elementary schools principally in that it will embrace, outside of (in addition to) the general and elementary curriculum, all branches of the classical high school, which are necessary for a true Christian and scientific education, such as: Religion, the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French and English languages; History, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, natural history, Introduction to Philosophy, Music, and Drawing. — C.F.W. Walther

Music expresses those thoughts and words, which have no form but have longing for love. — Debasish Mridha

Music fills the void between the heart and soul and connects them in heavenly delights. — Debasish Mridha

Tantric Buddhism is just a collection of things that work by doing them. And sometimes we add new things. We have electronic music; we did not have it in Tibet. — Frederick Lenz

Genius is its own reward; for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself ... Further, genius consists in the working of the free intellect., and as a consequence the productions of genius serve no useful purpose. The work of genius may be music, philosophy, painting, or poetry; it is nothing for use or profit. To be useless and unprofitable is one of the characteristics of genius; it is their patent of nobility. — Arthur Schopenhauer

One of the best things about humans is we recognize patterns, so we get things like science, music, philosophy. One of the worst things is that we see patterns that are not there so we get things like racism, homophobia and Jerry Falwell. — James Marsters

Sometime during the 1990s, when I was teaching philosophy at UCSD, my friend, colleague, and music teacher, Carol Plantamura, discussed the possibility of teaching a course together looking at ways in which various literary works (plays, stories, novels) had been treated as operas, and how different themes emerged in the opera and in its original. One of the pairings we planned to use was Mann's great novella and Britten's opera. Unfortunately, the course was never taught, but the idea remained with me. — Philip Kitcher

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives ... .
You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow. — Kurt Vonnegut

As regards my own 'philosophy,' I continue to be inspired by the music, liturgy and architectural tradition of the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. No one can fail to be uplifted by great cathedrals - such as that at Ely, near my home in Cambridge. — Martin Rees

My heart dances with joy and sings with passion when it hears the music of love. — Debasish Mridha

Everyone can understand music which is the universal language of love and kindness. — Debasish Mridha

My music and lyrics became an extension of this Indian philosophy. — Gary Wright

I have to learn to hear music, to see beauty, and to find joy in silence — Debasish Mridha

Poetry is an art of expressing the unknown music of our inner feelings and emotions in our known language. — Debasish Mridha

I believe hip hop's characteristic beliefs as a whole are misunderstood, underappreciated and highly underestimated. — Carlos Wallace

I make music that I know that people will enjoy, and balance the ideas and philosophy that we put in music with music that when we play it live, people can move to it and groove to it. — Ziggy Marley

Ours is a very eclectic offering. We're affiliated with the church but we're not just offering church music. Our philosophy is that we wanted to bring quality music to the entire valley and let everyone enjoy it since we have a fine venue. — John Wright

Let us play the flute of love to spread the music of peace, joy and happiness. — Debasish Mridha

The music and the philosophy feed off of one another on a subconscious level, though I've never really integrated my academic teaching into songwriting. But what they have in common is that they're both ways to tap into the mysterious parts of our world. — Steve Weinstein

Music touches our soul and lets it go ecstatic. — Debasish Mridha

I call him truly learned who brings everything to bear on the truth, so that from geometry, music, grammar, and philosophy itself, culling what is usefule, he guards the faith against assault. — Clement Of Alexandria

Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn't return my phone calls; the itch I'm unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn't something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It's just something I do because not writing, as I've found, is so much worse. — Quentin R. Bufogle

I didn't know that Mahler would come to play so large a role, nor that music and literature and philosophy can interinanimate one another in the way I've come to think they do in this case. — Philip Kitcher

Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. — Oscar Wilde

By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything. — H.L. Mencken

In so far as I listen with interest to a record, it's usually to figure out how it was arrived at. The musical end product is where interest starts to flag. It's a bit like jigsaw puzzles. Emptied out of the box, there's a heap of pieces, all shapes, sizes and colours, in themselves attractive and could add up to anything
intriguing. Figuring out how to put them together can be interesting, but what you finish up with as often as not is a picture of unsurpassed banality. Music's like that."
From "Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation" by Ben Watson, Verso, London, 2004, p. 440. — Derek Bailey

He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. — Oscar Wilde

Hope is the dance of the spirit.
Mind is the stage and imagination is the music. — Debasish Mridha

Unlike music or poetry or painting, food rouses no response in passionate and emotional youth. Only when the surge of the blood is quieted does gastronomy come into its own with philosophy and theology and the sterner delights of the mind. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Music is the language of the soul. It touches our deepest perceptions of being. Everyone understands music in his or her own way. Even animals understand music and respond to it with deep appreciation and love. — Debasish Mridha

Music is the sweetest language for hearts, kindest prayer for souls, peaceful breeze for minds, and a magical sail for imaginations. — Debasish Mridha

The thing I've been talking about with daughter is the idea of - and I'm talking about essentially in America - the possibility of, a lost generation. I've been listening to a lot of music - as a fan, as a critic, as somebody who likes to dance - but I hear, you know, within these songs and half the people I hear, these philosophies encoded and embedded in these songs. — Saul Williams

I think my style revolves around the philosophy that less is more, that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. That goes for my taste in design and in clothes, and even affects the way I approach music. I'm all about keeping things simple, and minimal, but being able to convey something powerful through that approach. — G-Eazy

Ancient philosophy was framed by prodigies,
Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.
And even though their thoughts were deemed the aristocratic voice,
they also had a thing for little boys.

Katherine the Great so it's been said,
needed large animals to be fulfilled in bed.
From historic rulers to the Ancient Greeks,
we're standing on the shoulders of freaks.

Isn't life pretty? Earnest Hemingway once said,
then he a bullet through his head.
Salvador Dali's surreal paintings were God sent,
you'd never know he ate his own excrement.

Then there's Da Vinci for whom it required,
dressing in women's underwear to be inspired.
From the great romantics to the Ancient Greeks,
we're standing on the shoulders of freaks.

Truman Capote needless to say,
would be intoxicated 20 hours a day.
From the modern authors to the Ancient Greeks,
we're standing on the shoulders of freaks. — Henry Phillips

In paintings, music, poetry, architecture, we feel the elusive energy that moves through us and the air and the ground all the time, that usually disperses and turns chaotic in our busy-ness and distractedness and moodiness. Artists channel it, corral it, make it visible to the rest of us. The best works of art are like semaphores of our experience, signaling what we didn't know was true but do now. — Anne Lamott

The ideal architect should be a man of letters, a skillful draftsman, a mathematician, familiar with historical studies, a diligent student of philosophy, acquainted with music, not ignorant of medicine, learned in the responses of jurisconsults, familiar with astronomy and astronomical calculations. — Vitruvius

Your voice is the sweetest music and the sound of your smile is the ecstasy of my life. — Debasish Mridha

I've always thought hard-boiled detective novels an American art form. At their best, they're more than who-dun-its or thrillers, they're vehicles for a writer's observations about culture, politics, philosophy, music, history and a time or a place. Or life, it's ownself. When you read James Ellroy, Dashiell Hammett or James Lee Burke, their stories are always about far more than good guys chasing bad guys. That's the kind of book I wanted to write. Still do. — Jim Nesbitt

Language is artificial, but our feelings are natural, inner, and universal. There are many languages, but feelings are the same for everyone. We can only describe it in different ways. A poet tries to sing the song of these feelings in different tunes with different music mixing with the inner emotions of the reader. — Debasish Mridha

Songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic ... whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambition to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk with. — Bob Dylan

Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness. But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man. — Olaf Stapledon

Nature has its own music, own song, if only we have time to listen and a heart to understand. — Debasish Mridha

Live a life like a beautiful song, touch every heart with loving words and memorable music. — Debasish Mridha

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. How — David McCullough

Music has infinite power to reach the gap between the heart and the soul to create infinite and ineffable joy. — Debasish Mridha

Because it exists as a living sonority, music is animated by voices, and these voices do not evaporate when music confronts the insights of contemporary literary criticism, or philosophy of language. — Carolyn Abbate