Les Paul

The guitar is just a wonderful instrument. It’s everything: a bartender, a psychiatrist, a housewife. It’s everything, but it’s elusive.

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

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else.

Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender. When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here. And I thought, if I’m gonna do this I’m going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson. Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician – I should go to the Gibson people.

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

Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.

To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.

You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals.

I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.

As you start your journey, the first thing you should do is throw away that store-bought map and begin to draw your own.

Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.

Many great ideas go unexecuted, and many great executioners are without ideas. One without the other is worthless.

Life is about growing and evolving. I feel like my life has been in stages, and the stages I went through when I was younger allowed me to grow into the man I am today.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

I’m a constant learner. You need to be a constant student because things change and you have to change and grow. And I emphasize the word ‘grow.’

There’s never been a doctor who served many patients who, despite their best efforts, did not lose some of them to death. But they understood that was part of life itself.

All men are created equal. No matter how hard they try, they can never erase those words. That is what America is about.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

No dream is too big. No challenge is too great. Nothing we want for our future is beyond our reach.

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.