Herbie Hancock Quotes
-
I don't look at music from the standpoint of being a musician; I look at it from the standpoint of being a human being.
-
I'm aware that a lot of what is happening in jazz has not had a very dynamic change in a long time.
-
I keep recycling and repackaging music that I've done in the past, as though I can't write anymore. Like, okay, I'm done with that. But I need to kind of prod myself again into come on, Herbie, get off your duff and start writing some new music.
-
Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept. He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were.
-
I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.
-
In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.
-
As a human being, I'm concerned about the world that I live in.So, I'm concerned about peace.I'm concerned about man's inhumanity to man. I'm concerned about the environment.
-
You can expand, repeat, even change keys and do other things electronically to give certain elements and phrases more cohesiveness.
-
Oscar Peterson is the greatest living influence on jazz pianists today.
-
It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.
-
Music truly is the universal language.
-
You don't need the fame to be vital.
-
The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.
-
A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students' creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.
-
You can change your character and, at the same time, change your fortune.
-
When I was in my early teens, I remember coming to the conclusion that your life never ends.
-
I look for what's of value and extract that. I don't look to criticize.
-
I learned the importance of being nonjudgmental, taking what happens and trying to make it work.That's something you should apply to life.
-
It might be something as simple as saying the right word to the right person at the right time-and that could change the course of history. You never really know. But the whole thing is to work at the process of being in sync with the universe, so that everything will align at the proper time so that you can deliver that which is your life mission. And that's why we're here as individuals. And then there's our contribution to the collective. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
-
But I have to be careful not to let the world dazzle me so much that I forget that I'm a husband and a father.
-
Of course, it's not the technique that makes the music; it's the sensitivity of the musician and his ability to be able to fuse his life with the rhythm of the times. This is the essence of music.
-
I've always been interested in science. I used to take watches apart and clocks apart, and there's little screws, and a little this and that, and I found out if I dropped one of them, that thing ain't gonna work.
-
Like no matter what happens, this would be the ultimate, they can make something positive happen.
-
The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.