Quincy Jones Quotes

Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.

I've been driven all my life by a spirit of adventure and a criminal level of optimism. I believed in my dreams because they were my only option. The people who make it to the top are addicted to their calling. You have to honor the gift God has given you. The people who get the call are the ones who'd be doing whatever it is they love, even if they weren't being paid.

I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe.

Not one ounce of my self worth depends on your acceptance of me.

Let's not get too full of ourselves. Let's leave space for God to come into the room.

You Make Your Mistakes To Learn How To Get To The Good Stuff

I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.

I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.

Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.

Music was the one thing I could control. It was the one world that offered me freedom. When I played music, my nightmares ended. My family problems disappeared. I didnt have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, pencilled scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and cool.

The people who make it to the top - whether they're musicians, or great chefs, or corporate honchos - are addicted to their calling ... [they] are the ones who'd be doing whatever it is they love, even if they weren't being paid.

The process is the most beautiful part.

I've always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, "Ain't that the truth."

Jazz has the power to make men forget their differences and come together... Jazz is the personification of transforming overwhelmingly negative circumstances into freedom, friendship, hope, and dignity.

It has been proven time and time again in countless studies that students who actively participate in arts education are twice as likely to read for pleasure, have strengthened problem-solving and critical thinking skills, are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, four times more likely to participate in a math and science fair.

There’s nothing in the world worse than having an opportunity that you’re not prepared for. Good luck usually follows the collision of opportunity and preparation - it’s a result of that collision. You’ve got to be prepared. So, make your mistakes now and make them quickly. If you’ve made the mistakes, you know what to expect the next time. That’s how you become valuable.

I tell my kids and I tell proteges, always have humility when you create and grace when you succeed, because its not about you. You are a terminal for a higher power. As soon as you accept that, you can do it forever.

The only music I don't like is bad music.

Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'

You cannot get an A if you're afraid of getting an F.

I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.

Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.

Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit

I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young, every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.

It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.

What happens when you get a big break and you haven't prepared yourself? That becomes the biggest mistake you've ever made. I see it happen all the time.

I used to practice piano for hours, and now, with a synthesizer, you can input the music and the machine perfects the song. That's why we have so many people in the music business who should be plumbers. They don't really understand music because they haven't been trained.

Every day you must be able to say, I have to get up because I'm needed by someone. As long as you have that, you're healthy.

When you're over the hill, that's when you pick up speed.

You have to know that your real home is within.

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.

I go to the favelas in Brazil. It's the same in the South Side of Chicago. It's the same, or just more violent. We're trying to get them to stop selling dope. You see kids with AK-47s, and nine-year-olds with nine millimeters. You know, they don't play. They make us look like nuns.

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

All the jazz guys had interracial relationships, and even the ladies did. Over the years, interracial relationships have been a hip, almost defiant thing, a way of saying "Nobody can put a boundary around me."

You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.

The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.

I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved that!

I improvised my life along the way - I just moved step-by-step. And I knew that if I got better, something would happen.

I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.

China's got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain't right.

Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country.

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.

It's very freaky in Chicago.There's something in the water there, I don't know what it is. But the actual word Chicago means, in the Indian language, garlic. It was just garlic and mosquitoes there. And that is the roughest city on the planet, and I been to every place in the world.

We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too.

Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.

There's power in the collective. If you don't believe me, just watch a symphony orchestra with a conductor and 120 people who are thinking about exactly the same thing at the same moment - no babies, no stock markets, no mortgages. Just 32nd notes.

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

We stole a box of honey jars one time and went out in the woods and took care of the whole box. I don't think I touched honey again for 20 years. I never wanted to see honey again.