196 Quotes by Quincy Jones

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.

To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony... that's the science and the craft.

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.

Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of 'the dozens.'

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

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.

When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older.

The only music I don't like is bad music.

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