Quote

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Miles Davis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Miles Davis
Age: 65 †
Born: 1926
Born: May 26
Died: 1991
Died: September 28
Actor
Autobiographer
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Film Score Composer
Jazz Musician
Musician
Recording Artist
Songwriter
Television Actor
Alton
Illinois
Miles Dewey Davis III
Miles Dewey Davis
III Davis
Slavery
Ignorance
Knowledge
Freedom

More quotes by Miles Davis

Image
Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it.
Miles Davis
Image
I can hear what I want [people] to play. If you don't hear what you want someone to play, then you can't tell 'em.
Miles Davis
Image
If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.
Miles Davis
Image
I gave the album [You're Under Arrest] to Quincy Jones and he loved D Train. We couldn't call it D Train it's called MDI/Something's On Your Mind/MD2. That's on the album.
Miles Davis
Image
Catch Harry Belafonte. He's got a helluva rhythm section.And so have the Pointer Sisters. And that little guy with Sammy Clayton. He plays the whole show with 40 members.
Miles Davis
Image
You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.
Miles Davis
Image
My ego only needs a good rhythm section
Miles Davis
Image
In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
Miles Davis
Image
If you had to call it unison, it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than unison, it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter.
Miles Davis
Image
To keep creating you have to be about change.
Miles Davis
Image
You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
Miles Davis
Image
When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
Miles Davis
Image
In other words, an instrument should be an extension of you it's supposed to sound like you - the way you walk, the way you dress, you know.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.
Miles Davis
Image
Lionel [Richie] said, Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums.
Miles Davis