Herbie Hancock (Herbert Jeffrey Hancock) Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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We are eternally linked not just to each other but our environment.
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I think I was supposed to play jazz.
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Music is the tool to express life - and all that makes a difference.
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There's so much spontaneity involved, what do you practice? How do you practice teamwork? How do you practice sharing? How do you practice daring? How do you practice being nonjudgmental?
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Jazz to me is the spirit of freedom. I mean real freedom. Freedom to explore. Freedom to express. Freedom to pour out your guts.
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The strongest thing that any human being has going is their own integrity and their own heart. As soon as you start veering away from that, the solidity that you need in order to be able to stand up for what you believe in and deliver what's really inside, it's just not going to be there.
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When I was young I used to listen to everything.
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My father was really good with math. It's a funny thing, I don't remember my father or my mother being so mechanical-minded. My father always wanted to be a doctor, but he came from a really poor family in Georgia, and there was no way he was going to be a doctor.
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Nobody told me I was a child prodigy.
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It is people's hearts that move the age.
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The most valuable things in life are priceless. They are courage, compassion, wisdom, respect for ourselves and others, and a host of characteristics that we call the beauty of the human spirit.
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One of the greatest experiences I ever had was listening to a conversation with Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter. Just to hear them talking, my mouth was open. They understand each other perfectly, and they make these leaps and jumps because they don't have to explain anything.
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I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer -- and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had.
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Buddhism has turned me on to my humanness, and is challenging my humanness so that I can become more human.
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So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.
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Life is not about finding our limitations, it's about finding our infinity.
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I'm always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.
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Wisdom corresponds to the future; it is philosophy.
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Forget about trying to compete with someone else. Create your own pathway. Create your own new vision.
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One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.
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I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.
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The first thing I ever heard about synthesizers, they were being used in rock.
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Don't be afraid to expand yourself, to step out of your comfort zone. That's where the joy and the adventure lie.
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Miles' sessions were not typical of anybody else's sessions. They were totally unique.