30 Awesome Music Quotes From Famous Non-Musicians

30 Awesome Music Quotes From Famous Non-Musicians
(Because it’s important to get an outside perspective)

The Internet is filled with tons of great quotes from musicians, both past and present. While I personally love to check out cool quotes from my musical heroes, I find it extremely gratifying to read the words of non-musicians regarding the impact that music has had on their lives. This is because non-musicians can sometimes show us a perspective that we (musicians) cannot normally see. Also, I think it’s enlightening to read quotes from intelligent and creative people who speak highly about our art form. Anyway, I hope you find these pearls of wisdom as inspiring as I do. Here we go…

“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

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination
and life to everything.”
― Plato

“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
― Victor Hugo

“Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Music is what tells us that the human race is greater than we realize.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.”
― Confucius

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.”
― Confucius

“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

“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”
― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
― Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

“The only truth is music.”
― Jack Kerouac

“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, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

“Music is the universal language of mankind.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Where words fail, music speaks.”
― Hans Christian Andersen

“Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.”
― Hans Christian Andersen

“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Where words leave off, music begins.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.”
― Lao Tzu

“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 literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.”
― Alphonse de Lamartine

“Without music, life would be a blank to me.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“You couldn’t not like someone who liked the guitar.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
― George Eliot

“The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.”
― W.H. Auden, The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Volume III, 1949-1955

“I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.”
― William Faulkner

“With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.”
― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Hell is full of musical amateurs.”
― George Bernard Shaw

So, there you have it…I hope you enjoyed these quotes. At the very least, you’re now armed with some great defensive jabs against those who happen to disapprove of your career choice. Just tell them that Einstein, Confucius and Plato have your back! It works every time…LOL.

-Adam Small