Quincy Jones famous quotes

You Make Your Mistakes To Learn How To Get To The Good Stuff
-- Quincy Jones

#Mistake #Stuff

The relationship with a producer and an artist is really special.It's got to be love and respect, amazing mutual respect for each other, because that's what makes a good record.
-- Quincy Jones

#Artist #Special #Records

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

#Children #Love You #Greatness

Empty the cup every time and it comes back at twice as full. I developed that attitude when I was very, very young, when I decided I didn't want to be a gangster anymore. Whether it's just shining shoes, I said okay, I'm going to do this better than anybody else did it in my life.
-- Quincy Jones

#Attitude #Shoes #Shining

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

#Space #Rooms

A bad song, the three best singers in the world cannot save it, and that's the bottom line.
-- Quincy Jones

#Song #World #Lines

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

#Laughter #Laughing #Soul

Thank God, 50 years ago I learned that a great song, our entire business is all based on two things; a great song and a great story. Film, television, if you don't have that story, nothing else matters. You don't call anybody else or direct anybody. The same with a song. A great song can make the worst singer in the world a star.
-- Quincy Jones

#Song #Stars #Years

The only music I don't like is bad music.
-- Quincy Jones

I got to trumpet, finally. That's why I love to write for brass, and [Count] Basie and [Frank] Sinatra and all that stuff, 'cause that's just like part of my DNA.
-- Quincy Jones

#Writing #Dna #Stuff

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Dream #Adventure #People

I never felt like that in my life. I didn't know human beings played these instruments. I heard them in Chicago and Louisville and St. Louis all my life, you know? But I didn't know human beings played them, you know? So the next day I went to Coontz Junior High School and I started on sousaphone, tuba, B-flat baritone, E-flat alto, French horn, trombone.
-- Quincy Jones

#School #Louisville #Tubas

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.
-- Quincy Jones

#Liquid #Frozen #Architecture

If I don't have a mother, I'll let music be my mother.
-- Quincy Jones

#Mother #Music Is

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

#Years #Racism #Economic

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Kids #Dope #Years

I'm a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.
-- Quincy Jones

#Rap #Hip Hop #Hips

My daddy was a carpenter that worked with the Jones boys, who are the most notorious in America. The black gangsters, you know, they were no joke. And he was their master carpenter. He used to build their homes, and all I saw when I was 11 years old were dead bodies and tommy guns and stogies, and backrooms, you know, Drexel Wine and Liquor, with the big piles of money underneath.
-- Quincy Jones

#Home #Wine #Gun

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

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Mean #Cities #Water

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Music #Men #Differences

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Real #Two #Mouths

It's amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don't have anything else to do.
-- Quincy Jones

#Women #Trouble

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Love #Family #Happiness

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Night #Mtv #People

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

#Country #Soul #Language

My grandmother had this high-tech security system - a rusty nail she used to lock the door.
-- Quincy Jones

#Grandmother #Doors #Nails

I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.
-- Quincy Jones

#One Day #World #Musician

Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.
-- Quincy Jones

#Games #Gangsters

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Writing #Home #Dry

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Thinking #Years #Care

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Kids #Humility #Forever

I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we've had in a long time. It's sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America.
-- Quincy Jones

#America #Long #Hip Hop

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.'
-- Quincy Jones

#Daddy #Done #Tasks

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

#People #Records #China

I was married for 36 years but now I'm free.
-- Quincy Jones

#Years #Married

I never felt like I had a mother.
-- Quincy Jones

#Mother

I don't remember feeling love.
-- Quincy Jones

#Feelings #Remember

Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.
-- Quincy Jones

#Idiosyncrasies

Im probably the only one in the world you can name thats worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. Fly Me to the Moon was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. Im the only one.
-- Quincy Jones

#Holiday #Moon #Rapper

Editing while you're writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.
-- Quincy Jones

#Baby #Writing #Editing

I've met every freak in the business.
-- Quincy Jones

#Freak #Mets

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Country #War #Home

When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out
-- Quincy Jones

#Mother #Father #Years

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

#Acceptance #Self Worth #Self

Imagine what a harmonious world it...
-- Quincy Jones

#African American #World #Imagine

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Mistake #Good Luck #Opportunity

It's the attitude about life, man. Looking at the light instead of the dark. Looking at love instead of fear.
-- Quincy Jones

#Attitude #Dark #Men

Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit
-- Quincy Jones

#Excellence #Habit

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

#Inspirational #Hills #Speed

I'm just a musician and a record producer.
-- Quincy Jones

#Records #Musician #Producers

I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.
-- Quincy Jones

#Flow #Believer

The process is the most beautiful part.
-- Quincy Jones

#Beautiful #Process

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Strong #Self #Answers

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....
-- Quincy Jones

#Art #Math #Thinking

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

#Music #Study #Harmony

I'd been in love before - I was always in love.
-- Quincy Jones

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Brother #Boys #Territory

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

#Journey #Years #Europe

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Block #Heart #Ghetto

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

#Art #Military #Emotional

All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.
-- Quincy Jones

#Girl #Guy #Want

A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!
-- Quincy Jones

#Song #Shapes #Singers

I was the most subtle person in the world.
-- Quincy Jones

#World #Subtle #Persons

You have to know that your real home is within.
-- Quincy Jones

#Real #Home

I'm never in my life going to do a record that's a tribute to myself. I don't need it.
-- Quincy Jones

#Needs #Records #Tribute

I don't deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn't deserve that, either. So I'll keep it.
-- Quincy Jones

#Music #Years #Awards

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Class #Play #Peers

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Inspirational #Motivational #People

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.
-- Quincy Jones

#Music #Kids #Upset

If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You're dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.
-- Quincy Jones

#New York #Guy #World

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#Thug #Color #Car

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.
-- Quincy Jones

#School #Forever #Different

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

#People #Black #Entertainment

My son is a hip-hop producer.
-- Quincy Jones

#Son #Hip Hop #Hips

My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.
-- Quincy Jones

#Memories #Fence

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

#Release #Dissonance #Tension

Billy Strayhorn wrote Multicolored Blue. Billy to me is the boss of the arrangers.
-- Quincy Jones

#Blue #Boss