Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Miles Davis, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Miles Davis quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 127 Miles Davis quotes for you to read and share.
Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money. -- Miles Davis
If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad. -- 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
I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap. -- Miles Davis
We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences. -- Miles Davis
I always listen to what I can leave out. -- Miles Davis
Do not be afraid of errors. There are no errors. -- Miles Davis
Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up. -- Miles Davis
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
WE WERE ALL UP IN THAT SHIT LIKE A MUTHAFUCKA. IT'S CLEANER THAN A BROKE DICK DOG. -- Miles Davis
When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school ... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves. -- Miles Davis
If you don't know what to play, play nothing. -- Miles Davis
Music is an addiction. -- Miles Davis
When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you ... their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others. -- Miles Davis
That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go. -- Miles Davis
I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself ... and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad. -- Miles Davis
Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent. -- Miles Davis
Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it. -- Miles Davis
Americans don't like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don't like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don't like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make 'em a lot of money. -- Miles Davis
You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads. -- Miles Davis
At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington. -- Miles Davis
I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there ... I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday. -- Miles Davis
I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. -- Miles Davis
Naw, I wasn't going to sell my principles for them. I wanted to be accepted as a good musician and that didn't call for no grinning, but just being able to play the horn good. And that's what I did then and now. Critics can take that or leave it. -- Miles Davis
I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing. -- 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
White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean? -- Miles Davis
When the band plays fast, you play slow; when the band plays slow, you play fast. -- Miles Davis
Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good. -- Miles Davis
If you understood everything I said, you'd be me -- Miles Davis
When you're creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit. -- Miles Davis
Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging
but that weren't sweet. -- Miles Davis
All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal. -- Miles Davis
Always listen for what you can leave out. -- 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
I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic. -- Miles Davis
A legend is an old man with a cane ... -- Miles Davis
Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around. -- Miles Davis
If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love. -- Miles Davis
You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line ... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best. -- Miles Davis
That was my gift ... having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it. -- Miles Davis
Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play. -- Miles Davis
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player. -- Miles Davis
So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record. -- Miles Davis
[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll. -- Miles Davis
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
If you're trying to be hip, be hip. -- Miles Davis
Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know. -- Miles Davis
Music is the framework around the silence. -- Miles Davis
The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play -- Miles Davis
It takes a long time to sound like yourself. -- Miles Davis
For me, music and life are all about style. -- Miles Davis
He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question. -- 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
There are no wrong notes. -- Miles Davis
Always look ahead, but never look back. -- Miles Davis
If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow. -- Miles Davis
See, music is about style. -- Miles Davis
My ego only needs a good rhythm section -- Miles Davis
Do not fear mistakes - there are none. -- Miles Davis
You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians. -- Miles Davis
You have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself. -- Miles Davis
Don't play what's there; play what's not there. -- Miles Davis
You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself -- Miles Davis
I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean? -- Miles Davis
In improvisation, there are no mistakes. -- Miles Davis
When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads -- 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
What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it. -- Miles Davis
You can't eat a winner's plaque. -- Miles Davis
I still got my Ferrari. -- Miles Davis
If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention. -- Miles Davis
As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it. -- Miles Davis
Sometimes you have to play a long time to play like yourself. -- Miles Davis
I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused. -- Miles Davis
I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap. -- Miles Davis
I'll play it and tell you what it is later. -- Miles Davis
In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn. -- Miles Davis
I'm a fiend when it comes to good pastry, and the French make the best as far as I'm concerned. -- Miles Davis
Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery -- Miles Davis
I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician. -- Miles Davis
I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way. -- 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 not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play. -- Miles Davis
Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education. -- Miles Davis
In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much. -- 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 got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else. -- Miles Davis
To keep creating you have to be about change. -- Miles Davis
You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible. -- Miles Davis
Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one. -- Miles Davis
If you understood everything I say, you'd be me! -- Miles Davis
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
A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear. -- Miles Davis
We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em. -- Miles Davis
Coltrane, you cant play everything at once! -- Miles Davis
I know what I've done for music, but don't call me "a legend".( ... ) A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it. -- Miles Davis
The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones. -- Miles Davis
But you've got to have style in whatever you do -- writing, music, painting, fashion, boxing, anything. -- Miles Davis
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
You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four. -- Miles Davis
There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places. -- Miles Davis
In music, silence is more important than sound. -- Miles Davis
You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not. -- Miles Davis
Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street. -- Miles Davis
Play what you know and then play above that -- Miles Davis
Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then. -- Miles Davis
I'm out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I'm still playing. -- Miles Davis
I'll play it first and figure out what it's called later. -- Miles Davis
The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas. -- Miles Davis
John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive -- Miles Davis
Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it. -- Miles Davis
Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin! -- Miles Davis
My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life. -- Miles Davis
Don't be afraid of mistakes - There are none. -- Miles Davis
It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself. -- Miles Davis
Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. -- Miles Davis
You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played -- 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
Food makes my mind sluggish. -- Miles Davis
I'll play it first and tell you what it is later. -- Miles Davis
Keith, how does it feel to be a genius? -- Miles Davis
First you imitate, then you innovate. -- Miles Davis
I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic. -- 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
Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself. -- Miles Davis
I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands. -- Miles Davis
