Les Paul

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you’ve got white, pick it where you’ve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you’ll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

You can’t go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.

Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist – whatever.

A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

Failure is a bruise, not a tattoo.

Look in my eyes right now – you see no sunken place.

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

You will never know true freedom until you achieve financial freedom.

I’ve never been terribly interested in why people give, because their motivation is rarely what it seems to be, and it’s almost never true altruism.

To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you’ll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.

If your watch is slow by just four minutes, that’s not much – unless you’ve been warned that if you’re even one minute late ever again you will be fired. Then four minutes make a big difference.

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Have some fire. Be unstoppable. Be a force of nature. Be better than anyone here. And don’t give a damn what anyone thinks.

All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.

Rules are meant to be broken.