FAVOURITE QUOTES ABOUT MUSIC and MUSIC EDUCATION

Often, when asked to speak at various conferences or workshops on a particular topic, I like to find a quote that reinforces what I am talking about.  

Over the years I have put together quite a list which I thought I would share with you.

Of course there are many more great quotes out there that I haven’t yet discovered so PLEASE email me your favourites on deborah@dsmusic.com.au

Music Education Quotes & Music Quotes

“If you cannot teach me to fly – teach me to sing” James Barrie (author of “Peter Pan”)

“Tell me & I forget. Teach me & I remember. Involve me & I learn.” Benjamin Franklin

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” Confucius

“Music education opens doors that help children pass from school into the world around them – a world of work, culture, intellectual activity, and human involvement. The future of our nation depends on providing our children with a complete education that includes music.” Gerald Ford

“Some people think music education is a privilege, but I think it’s essential to being human.” Jewel

“I always loved music; whoso has skill in this art is of good temperament, fitted for all things. We must teach music in schools; a schoolmaster ought to have skill in music, or I would not regard him.” Martin Luther

“Teaching music is not my main purpose. I want to make good citizens. If children hear fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play it, they develop sensitivity, discipline and endurance. They get a beautiful heart.” Shinichi Suzuki

“Music education can help spark a child’s imagination or ignite a lifetime of passion. Music education should not be a privilege for a lucky few, it should be a part of every child’s world of possiblity.”  Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Instrumentalists can best interpret a work if they sing it to themselves first.” Toscanini

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” Victor Hugo

“Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.” Martin Luther

“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or to bend a knotted oak.” William Congreve

“Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.” Plato

“If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.”  Zimbabwe Proverb

“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Berthold Auerbach

“Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!” Oliver Wendell Holmes

“He who sings scares away his woes.” Cervantes

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

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

“Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them, you learn notes to play to the music of your soul.” Katie Greenwood

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” Friedrich Nietzsche

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” Plato

“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.” George Bernard Shaw

“Why do we teach music? Not because we expect you to major in music. Not because we expect you to play and sing all your life. Not so you can relax. But so you will be human. So you will recognise beauty. So you will be sensitive. So you will have something to cling to. So you will have more love, compassion, more gentleness, more good, in short, more life. Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live? That is why we teach music.” Unknown

As we (in Australia at least) are drawing near to end of another school year, this will be my last post for 2015.

I wish you all a wonderful holiday celebration wherever and whoever you are and I look forward to working with you again to create a wonderful world full of music in February 2016. Warmest regards

Deb