Keith Jarrett

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

We really never know what we’re gonna play when we get on stage.

If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

The way I think about the practicing, it is my undercover work.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: -in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.

If we are but sure the end is right, we are too apt to gallop over all bounds to compass it; not considering the lawful ends may be very unlawfully attained.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Strange – is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.