Best 67 Miles Davis Quotes for the Jazz Revolution
He was one of the greatest musicians of all time! These Miles Davis quotes reveal a visionary who pioneered new forms of musical expression and created masterpieces, like the quintessential “Kind of Blue”, the best-selling jazz album of all time and an essential listening for all music lovers. Everybody knows him by his little name: Miles, and truth to be told, he was miles ahead of his time!
Born in 1926, in Alton, Illinois, Miles Davis was an American jazz musician, a master trumpet player and composer. A real virtuoso and innovator, Davis adopted a more direct, vibratoless tone that broke conventional jazz forms and became his trademark playing style. Revered for his talent and musical fertility he garnered numerous honors and accolades, won 9 Grammy Awards and was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Miles Davis died in 1991 of respiratory failure.
Miles Davis had a profound influence in the evolution of jazz. An eclectic innovator throughout his life, he was constantly searching for new ways to express himself beyond the traditional jazz forms and styles. In collaboration with some of the most prominent jazz artists of his era, he experimented with new sounds, rhythmical structures and instruments, and produced some of the most timeless and influential pieces of jazz music. Davis transcended the strict boundaries between jazz, rock and funk and pioneered jazz fusion and modal jazz – new forms of musical expression that made jazz popular with mainstream audiences and inspired thousands of musicians.
As a tribute to this great legend, here we have curated for you his most inspirational quotes. Share them with friends and loved ones in order to motivate them! Use them to pair perfectly with your Instagram and social media posts! Reflect upon them and transform your perspective of life!
Table of Contents
- Short Quotes by Miles Davis
- Miles Davis Quotes About His Music
- Miles Davis Quotes About Himself
- Inspirational Miles Davis Quotes About Life
- Quotes by Miles Davis About Society, Discrimination and Race Stereotypes
- Miles Davis Quotes About Jazz and Everything Else
Short Quotes by Miles Davis
These short quotes will make perfect captions and create buzz on your Instagram and social media posts!
- If you understood everything I said, you’d be me. Miles Davis
- Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery. Miles Davis
- Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. Miles Davis
- Music is an addiction. Miles Davis
- Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around. Miles Davis
- For me, music and life are all about style. Miles Davis
- If you’re not making a mistake, it’s a mistake. Miles Davis
- In improvisation, there are no mistakes. Miles Davis
- I always listen to what I can leave out. Miles Davis
- If you don’t know what to play, play nothing. Miles Davis
- Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one. Miles Davis
- Do not fear mistakes, there are none. Miles Davis
- In music, silence is more important than sound. Miles Davis
- Always look ahead, but never look back. Miles Davis
- Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing. Miles Davis
- At least one day out of the year all musicians should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington. Miles Davis
- Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it. Miles Davis
- The metric system ruined me. Miles Davis
- All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal. Miles Davis
- Prince is from the school of James Brown, and I love James Brown because of all the great rhythms he plays. Miles Davis
- A painting is music you can see, and music is a painting you can hear. Miles Davis
- First you imitate, then you innovate. Miles Davis
- I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later. Miles Davis
- If it sounds clean and slick, I’ve been doing it too long. Miles Davis
- My ego only needs a good rhythm section. Miles Davis
- I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing. Miles Davis
- You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads. Miles Davis
- Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it. Miles Davis
- Play what you know, and then play above that. Miles Davis
- If you’re not nervous, then you’re not paying attention. Miles Davis
Miles Davis Quotes About His Music
Davis’ musical prodigy was manifested in his playing – emulating the human voice, it was characterized by a delicacy and an almost palpable intellectual quality!
- I was minding my own business when something says to me, ‘You ought to blow trumpet’. I have just been trying ever since. Miles Davis
- It’s not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change. Miles Davis
- When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn’t have no time after that for nothing else. Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography
- Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself. Miles Davis
- Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there. Miles Davis
- Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherf***r who plays it is 80 percent. Miles Davis
- It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong. Miles Davis
- You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from. Miles Davis
- When you’re creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain’t the limit. Miles Davis
- If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can’t be trusted. Miles Davis
- When I’m playing, I’m never through. It’s unfinished. I like to find a place to leave for someone else to finish it. Miles Davis
- It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it? Miles Davis
- It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it. Miles Davis
Miles Davis Quotes About Himself
Here you will find some quotes by the “Jesus of jazz” about himself!
- Some day I’m gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up. Miles Davis
- Being rebellious and black, a nonconformist, being cool and hip and angry and sophisticated and ultra clean, whatever else you want to call it – I was all those things and more. But I was playing the f**k out of my horn and had a great group, so I didn’t get recognition based only on a rebel image. Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography
- My father’s rich, my momma’s good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I’ve never suffered and don’t intend to suffer. Miles Davis
- The only thing I’m interested in is the music and the musicians. I don’t acknowledge applause ’cause I’m giving them something. They’re not giving me anything with their applause. Miles Davis
- The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas stove somebody lit… I remember being shocked by the whoosh of the blue flame jumping off the burner, the suddenness of it… I saw that flame and felt that hotness of it close to my face. I felt fear, real fear, for the first time in my life. But I remember it also like some kind of adventure, some kind of weird joy, too. I guess that experience took me someplace in my head I hadn’t been before… The fear I had was almost like an invitation, a challenge to go forward into something I knew nothing about. That’s where I think my personal philosophy of life and my commitment to everything I believe in started… In my mind I have always believed and thought since then that my motion had to be forward, away from the heat of that flame. Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography
Inspirational Miles Davis Quotes About Life
Miles Davis was a restless genius, always pushing forward, exploring new frontiers of musical expression!
- My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life. Miles Davis
- But you’ve got to have style in whatever you do — writing, music, painting, fashion, boxing, anything. Miles Davis
- I learned so much from my cousin, Alexander. I think he did things the right way. That’s how he made it to the NFL… But the biggest thing I got from him was working hard and doing whatever you can to help the team. Miles Davis
Quotes by Miles Davis About Society, Discrimination and Race Stereotypes
Davis was a supporter of the Black Power movement and his musical expression was a form of protest.
- It’s like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of shit is that, but white people’s shit? Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography
- In school I was the best, but the prizes went to boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn. Miles Davis
- I hate how white people always try to take credit for something after they discover it. Like it wasn’t happening before they found out about it–which most times is always late, and they didn’t have nothing to do with it happening. Miles Davis
- I know people get tired of hearing it but black people have got to keep saying it, throwing our conditions up into these people’s faces until something is done about the way they have treated us. We’ve just got to keep it in front of their eyes and their ears like the Jews have done. We’ve got to make them know and understand just how evil the things are that they did to us over all these years and are still doing to us today. Miles Davis
Miles Davis Quotes About Jazz and Everything Else
Miles Davis infused jazz with his musical DNA and gave it new life, creating new ways for musical expression to bloom, because for Davis jazz was life!
- The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas. Miles Davis
- A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it’s going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that’s available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different. Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography
- The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they’re full of chords. I can’t play them…I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to the emphasis on melodic rather than a harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them. Miles Davis
- I never thought jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic. Miles Davis
- Jazz music has got to have that thing. You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport festival. Miles Davis
- Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play. Miles Davis
- You can tell whether a person plays or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not. Then the way they talk and act. If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit. Miles Davis
- You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis hasn’t played. Miles Davis
- I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know. Miles Davis
- If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked. Miles Davis
- You’d be surprised. Drummers ape each other. The way every rock n’ roll record sounds like something else but not all together. Everything other drummers play, if you’re playing drums, they all hear. Miles Davis
- I love Pops, I love the way he sings, the way he plays – everything he does, except when he says something against modern-jazz music. Miles Davis
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