Brian Eno

Explore inspiring quotes by Brian Eno, a remarkable figure whose words continue to inspire and motivate people around the world.

Total Quotes

Top Categories by Brian Eno

Discover the themes and topics this author explores most

music

32 quotes

art

4 quotes

change

3 quotes

technology

3 quotes

religion

3 quotes

future

3 quotes

experience

2 quotes

work

1 quotes

Featured Quotes by Brian Eno

Some of the most memorable quotes from this author

"I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school."

— Brian Enoart

"At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art."

— Brian Enoart

"The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another."

— Brian Enoart

"One of the things you're doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right."

— Brian Enoart

"It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene."

— Brian Enochange

"I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn't mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it, but they're happy if they do get it."

— Brian Enochange

All Quotes by Brian Eno

Browse all quotes from this author

"I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school."

-Brian Eno

artView Quote

"At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art."

-Brian Eno

artView Quote

"The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another."

-Brian Eno

artView Quote

"One of the things you're doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right."

-Brian Eno

artView Quote

"It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene."

-Brian Eno

changeView Quote

"I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn't mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it, but they're happy if they do get it."

-Brian Eno

changeView Quote

"I take sounds and change them into words."

-Brian Eno

changeView Quote

"The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work."

-Brian Eno

computersView Quote

"Everybody is entertained to death."

-Brian Eno

deathView Quote

"I've had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I've often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head."

-Brian Eno

dreamsView Quote

"We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience."

-Brian Eno

experienceView Quote

"Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it."

-Brian Eno

experienceView Quote

"I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there."

-Brian Eno

freedomView Quote

"I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming."

-Brian Eno

futureView Quote

"Something I've realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we're smart about it."

-Brian Eno

futureView Quote

"I've noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it's far enough in the future."

-Brian Eno

futureView Quote

"When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue."

-Brian Eno

greatView Quote

"The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular."

-Brian Eno

historyView Quote

"When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks.'"

-Brian Eno

intelligenceView Quote

"One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better."

-Brian Eno

knowledgeView Quote

"I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function."

-Brian Eno

learningView Quote

"I don't live in the past at all I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind."

-Brian Eno

movingonView Quote

"Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"You can't really imagine music without technology."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!"

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I don't like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I think we're about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Once music ceases to be ephemeral - always disappearing - and becomes instead material... it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh, let's put that sentence there, let's get rid of this' - have become commonplace in films and music too."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"For instance, I'm always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"There are certain sounds that I've found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music - not like a record that you'd put on, which would play for a while and finish."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"One often makes music to supplement one's world."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I've got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Most game music is based on loops effectively."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"In England and Europe, we have this huge music called ambient - ambient techno, ambient house, ambient hip-hop, ambient this, ambient that."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one's furniture."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven't been made easier technically."

-Brian Eno

musicView Quote

"If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture."

-Brian Eno

religionView Quote

"If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas."

-Brian Eno

religionView Quote

"I'm actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender."

-Brian Eno

religionView Quote

"You can't really imagine music without technology."

-Brian Eno

technologyView Quote

"I'm very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement."

-Brian Eno

technologyView Quote

"I'm always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven't thought of doing yet."

-Brian Eno

technologyView Quote

"I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth."

-Brian Eno

truthView Quote

"Law is always better than war."

-Brian Eno

warView Quote

"The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work."

-Brian Eno

workView Quote

Other Authors to Explore

Explore more inspiring authors

View All Authors

Brian Eno

Top Categories by Brian Eno

music

art

change

technology

religion

future

experience

work

Featured Quotes by Brian Eno

All Quotes by Brian Eno

"I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school."

"At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art."

"The smart thing in the art world is to have one good idea and never have another."

"One of the things you're doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right."

"It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene."

"I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn't mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it, but they're happy if they do get it."

"I take sounds and change them into words."

"The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work."

"Everybody is entertained to death."

"I've had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I've often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head."

"We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience."

"Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it."

"I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there."

"I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming."

"Something I've realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we're smart about it."

"I've noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it's far enough in the future."

"The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular."

"One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better."

"I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function."

"I don't live in the past at all I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind."

"Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable."

"Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music."

"You can't really imagine music without technology."

"I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!"

"Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it."

"I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music."

"At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art."

"I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice."

"Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others."

"The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important."

"We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience."

"I make a lot of pieces of music that I never release as CDs."

"It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of."

"I don't like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones."

"I think we're about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world."

"People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to."

"I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth."

"Once music ceases to be ephemeral - always disappearing - and becomes instead material... it leaves the condition of traditional music and enters the condition of painting. It becomes a painting, existing as material in space, not immaterial in time."

"Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh, let's put that sentence there, let's get rid of this' - have become commonplace in films and music too."

"For instance, I'm always fascinated to see whether, given the kind of fairly known and established form called popular music, whether there is some magic combination that nobody has hit upon before."

"There are certain sounds that I've found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music."

"Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music - not like a record that you'd put on, which would play for a while and finish."

"One often makes music to supplement one's world."

"I've got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things."

"Most game music is based on loops effectively."

"In England and Europe, we have this huge music called ambient - ambient techno, ambient house, ambient hip-hop, ambient this, ambient that."

"Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about."

"I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders."

"The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular."

"The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one's furniture."

"Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive."

"Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven't been made easier technically."

"If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture."

"If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas."

"I'm actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender."

"You can't really imagine music without technology."

"I'm very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement."

"I'm always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven't thought of doing yet."

"I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth."

"Law is always better than war."

"The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work."

Related Authors

Henry David Thoreau

Mitt Romney

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friedrich Nietzsche

Mahatma Gandhi

George Bernard Shaw