This page has been created for the Music Teachers of Howard County who were kind enough to ask after the quotes posted around my school. I hope that they are an inspiration to you and your students. I hope that you and any other visitors to this page use these quotes to inspire others as you see fit.

-- Andrew Spang

We have to establish already in school children the belief that music belongs to everyone and is, with a little effort, available to everyone.
      ---Zoltan Kodaly, Lecture, 1946

When words leave off, music begins.
      ---Heinrich Heine

Music is the universal language of mankind.
      ---Henry Woodsworth Longfellow

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections are darks as Erebus:
Let no man be trusted. Mark the music.
      ---William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

I always loved music;
whoso has skill in this art is of a good temperament, fitted for all things. We must teach music in the schools.
      ---Martin Luther, Table Talk, 1566

Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.
      ---Confucious, Book of Rites

People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least not while the music lasts.
      ---Paul Hindemith, Shapiro, 1978

Without music, life would be a mistake.
      ---Fredrich Nietzsche

Songs are sneaky things. They can skip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells...I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.
      ---Pete Seeger

Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.
      ---Napolean Bonapart

Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education.
      ---Plato

Music is a moral law.
It gives soul to the universe,
wings to the mind,
flight to the imagination,
a charm to the gaiety, and
fire to everything.
It is the essence of order and leads
to all that is just and beautiful.
      ---Plato

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.
      ---Nadia Boulanger, in Le Monde musical, 1919.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
      ---Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is music? This question occupied my mind for hours last night before I fell asleep. The very existence of music is wonderful, I might even say miraculous. Its domain is between thought and phenomena. Like a twilight mediator, it hovers between spirit and matter, related to both, yet differing from each. It is spirit, but it is spirit subject to the measurement of time. It is matter, but it is matter that can dispense with space.
      ---Heinrich Heine

To the talented children of the world. Let them always have the opportunity to grow, develop, and above all, create.
      ---T. Geter

I found that the more I practiced,
the better I played,
and the better I played,
the more I enjoyed it.
      ---Adolf "Bud" Herseth
          Principal Trumpet,
          Chicago Symphony Orchestra
          from 1948-1998

I try to sound my very best at the very first note in my brain...
If you are always thinking musically you should be able
to pick up your horn at any time and get your best sound.

The first sound after silence should always be your best.

...for that which does not come from the heart
will surely not reach the heart.
      ---J. J. Quantz

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo de Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
      ---Anon.

No! Try not!
Do! Or do not!
There is no "try!"
      ---Jedi Master Yoda (The Empire Strikes Back)

I've found that to go from one level to another
you often have to destroy some knowledge
in order to gain other knowledge.
      ---Yo-Yo Ma
          World Renowned Cellist

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act,
but a habit.
      ---Aristotle

Always listen to what you play.

A musician who plays their instrument
without listening carefully ...
is like an artist who draws a picture
with their eyes closed.
      ---Andrew Spang

Anyone who has never made a mistake
has never tried anything new.
      ---Albert Einstein

Whether you think you
can or cannot,
you are probably right.
      ---Anon.

We can choose to throw stones,
To stumble on them,
To climb over them,
Or to build with them.
      ---William Arthur Ward

As a wind player,
you must plan for each breath --

your breathing is either
part of the music,
or it interrupts the music.
      ---Andrew Spang

Nothing is so truly bounded and obedient to law as music, yet nothing so surely breaks all petty and narrow bonds.
      ---Henry David Thoreau

Teaching music is not my main purpose. I want to make good citizens. If a child hears fine music from the day of his birth and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline, and endurance. He gets a beautiful heart.
      ---Shinichi Suzuki

The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sing best.
      ---Henry David Thoreau

What would a child learn sooner than a song?
      ---Alexander Pope

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.
      ---Gustav Mahler

Americans have always made music. From the pioneers to the astronauts, music has been a part of our country's character. While we share songs, with our children, we are also giving them part of America.
      ---Burl Ives

The best way to get to knowing any bunch of people
is to go and listen to their music.
      ---Woody Guthrie

Character is the backbone of our human culture,
and music is the flowering of character.
      ---Confucius

The only time
success
comes before
work
is in the dictionary.
      ---Anon.

Music...can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.
      ---Leonard Bernstein