Quotes about sound
page 28

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma photo
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis photo
Bismillah Khan photo

“Ustad Bismillah Khan’s specialization lies in his ability to produce intricate sound patterns on the Shehnai, which was hitherto, considered impossible on this instrument.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

Raj Kumar in [Kumar, Raj, Essays on Indian Music, http://books.google.com/books?id=wwwX6DWfn3gC&pg=PA205, 1 January 2003, Discovery Publishing House, 978-81-7141-719-3, 205–]

Bismillah Khan photo
Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya photo

“As sound as what one might expect from the distinguished engineer who drew them up. He has shown the way to turn dire misfortune into a positive blessing. The proposals are without blemish. I strongly advocate carrying out the scheme.”

Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya (1860–1962) Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore

Allen, a well-known engineer in Madras service, while commenting on Visvesvaraya's schemes for Hyderabad as quoted in The Most Celebrated Indian Engineer:Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, 22 November 2013, Official web site of Government of India: Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/dream/feb2000/article1.htm,

John Cale photo

“John Cale is fantastic, and he made the sound of the Velvet Underground.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Jayne County, attributed without citation at About Cale, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/quote_others.html,

Satyajit Ray photo
Ellen Kushner photo

“Abjuring love? Real people don’t do that. Now you’re the one who sounds like someone on a stage. That’s not the real world. Real people follow their hearts, wherever it takes them. Real people refuse to be put into a little tiny box. You can say you love me or you don’t love me, it doesn’t matter; I know you have foresworn nothing except an existence you found intolerable.”

She really did smile this time. “Now you’re making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don’t really want to live in it, either.”
Part III, Chapter VIII (p. 299)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Shawn Lane photo

“Temporal was the first recording that captured my true guitar sound (dinosaurs slipping and blocks of wire whittled with a feather).”

Shawn Lane (1963–2003) American musician

The mood of the world was different and yet music (sculpted time) always is there waiting to be manifested.
http://bardorecords.com/Bardo136.htm Press site for the album Temporal Analogues of Paradise (1995)

“Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Maeve Gilmore (his widow), Introduction to A Book of Nonsense, p. 10

Chittaranjan Das photo
Pauline Kael photo
Jeff Buckley photo

“It was the kind of collaboration I dream about actually. His voice sounded, you know, like an angel. Like a gift from God.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Gary Lucas – Guitarist from NBC Edgewise Tribute on MSNBC from 1997.

Prem Rawat photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“This sounded promising, and my coefficient of cupidity jumped several points.”

I Remember Babylon, p. 705
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“Christine would surely be talking, even if she had only an ape as audience. To her, any silence was as great a challenge as a blank canvas; it had to be filled with the sound of her own voice.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

An Ape About the House, p. 802
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Choudhry Rahmat Ali photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Eva Hart photo
Tracey Thorn photo
Daniel Abraham photo

“That sounds like post hoc realpolitik rationalizing bullshit.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 28 (p. 298)

N. K. Jemisin photo
Benito Mussolini photo

“With each new discovery of chemistry, physics, biology, the anthropological sciences, of the practical application of sound principles, dogma collapses. It is a part of that old edifice of religion which crumbles and falls in ruins.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

Marilyn Ferguson photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Ethan Allen photo

“Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependence on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "_That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity_."”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of eternalization [sic] and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without vallies [sic], or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...

Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784)

Anthony Fauci photo

“Even before we knew it was a coronavirus, I said it certainly sounds like a coronavirus-SARS type thing. As soon as it was identified, I called a meeting of top-level people and said, 'Let's start working on a vaccine right now.'”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Response to the 2020 coronavirus epidemic, reported in Denise Grady, "Not his first epidemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci sticks to the facts", The New York Times (March 15, 2020).

Trevor Loudon photo

“There are many roads to tyranny. “Democratic socialism” is but the subtlest and most benign sounding road to communism.”

Trevor Loudon New Zealand politician

Will ‘Democratic Socialism’ Lead to Communism? https://www.theepochtimes.com/will-democratic-socialism-lead-to-communism_2777705.html

Anna J. Cooper photo

“We too often mistake individuals’ honor for race development and so are ready to substitute pretty accomplishments for sound sense and earnest purpose.”

Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) African-American author, educator, speaker and scholar

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 29

Alastair Reynolds photo
Patañjali photo

“Through the sounding of the Word and through reflection upon its meaning, the Way is found.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Gottfried Benn photo

“The I-breakdown, sweet, deep craved
You give it to me: already my throat is raw,
Already I hear the alien sound
Rebuilding unspoken images of my I.”

Gottfried Benn (1886–1956) German novelist, poet

Original: (de) Den Ich-zerfall, den süßen, tiefersehnten,
Den gibst Du mir: schon ist die Kehle rauh,
Schon ist der fremde Klang an unerwähnten
Gebilden meines Ichs am Unterbau.

"Cocaine" (1917)

Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Patañjali photo

“The Word of Ishvara is AUM (or OM). This is the Pranava.
II. The Sacred Word. This is the Word of Glory, the AUM. This is the Pranava, the sound of conscious Life itself as It is breathed forth into all forms...”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Alice A. Bailey photo

“The Word of Ishvara is AUM (or OM). This is the Pranava.
II. The Sacred Word. This is the Word of Glory, the AUM. This is the Pranava, the sound of conscious Life itself as It is breathed forth into all forms...”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

Tracy Chevalier photo

“Dialogue is always tricky. Authenticity is almost impossible, and you always end up sounding too olde worlde. What I do is to strip the words back, so I get the dialogue to sound timeless…”

Tracy Chevalier (1962) American writer

On how she composes character dialogue in “Tracy Chevalier: 'Slavery has to be raised until it's put to bed'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/17/tracy-chevalier-interview-last-runaway in The Guardian (2013 Mar 16)

David Sedaris photo
Florence Nightingale photo
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner photo
Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie photo

“"In Nigeria I'm not black…We don't do race in Nigeria. We do ethnicity a lot, but not race. My friends here don't really get it. Some of them sound like white Southerners from 1940. They say, 'Why are black people complaining about race? Racism doesn't exist!'”

Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie (1977) Nigerian writer

It's just not a part of their existence."

On how views of race differ in Nigeria than the United States in “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘I Wanted To Claim My Own Name’” https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-novelist-ted-speaker-interview in Vogue (2015 Nov 3)

Paramahansa Yogananda photo

“Poetry shows up where language shows up – a mysterious supplement, to borrow or deform an old Derrida epithet, that we cannot do without, and that just might be the basis of the material world as we know it. Well, if not language as such, then sound…”

Ariana Reines (1982) American writer

On poetry in “INTERVIEW WITH ARIANA REINES” http://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-ariana-reines/ in The White Review (July 2019)

Happy Rhodes photo

“I dreamed I was an animal
In a human world;
Now when I hear big sounds
I cry like a little girl. I'm talking about connections
Between here and there;
All things exist at once
Seems more than we can bear.”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"All Things (Mia ia io)" - Live performance at The Tin Angel, Philadelphia, PA (15 March 1997) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eACEYTQkoLA
Warpaint (1991)

Alexey Navalny photo

“[F]orgive me if this sounds pompous, but it’s better to die standing up than live on your knees.”

Alexey Navalny (1976) Russian anti-corruption activist

Source: As quoted in "Net Impact: One man's cyber-crusade against Russian corruption" http://archive.is/FGqQE (4 April 2011), by Julia Ioffe, The New Yorker

“At such moments the voice of reason always sounds like blasphemy and dissenters are of the devil.”

Marion L. Starkey (1901–1991) American historian & writer

Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 7, “John Proctor’s Jade” (p. 102)

Ennio Morricone photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“Turn where we may,—within,—around,—the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while every thing at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age,—now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the continent is still resounding in our ears,—now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings,—now, while we see on every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies dissolved,—now, while the heart of England is still sound,—now, while the old feelings and the old associations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away,—now, in this your accepted time,—now in this your day of salvation,—take counsel, not of prejudice,—not of party spirit,—not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency,—but of history,—of reason,—of the ages which are past,—of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great Debate has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by their own ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time is short. If this Bill should be rejected, I pray to God that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing regret, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1831) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1831/mar/02/ministerial-plan-of-parliamentary-reform#column_1204 in favour of the Reform Bill
1830s

Jerry Seinfeld photo

“The real motivation of bein' a comedian is if you really love the sound of a laugh. And if you love that, you will never want to stop.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 3 (2014)

Edith Sitwell photo
Diane Ackerman photo
Chris Carmack photo

“When I’m creating music, I don’t have an agenda for a sound or a genre or a message, I just want it to be truthful and representative of the lyrical content that means something to me, and the music that I love.”

Chris Carmack (1980) American actor and model

‘Nashville’ Star Chris Carmack on Introspective New EP: Ram Report https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/nashville-star-chris-carmack-on-introspective-new-ep-ram-report-188637/ (December 11, 2015)

Nancy Knowlton photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo

“Now I tell what is very strong magic. I woke in the midst of the night. When I woke, the fire had gone out and I was cold. It seemed to me that all around me there were whisperings and voices. I closed my eyes to shut them out. Some will say that I slept again, but I do not think that I slept. I could feel the spirits drawing my spirit out of my body as a fish is drawn on a line.
Why should I lie about it? I am a priest and the son of a priest. If there are spirits, as they say, in the small Dead Places near us, what spirits must there not be in that great Place of the Gods? And would not they wish to speak? After such long years? I know that I felt myself drawn as a fish is drawn on a line. I had stepped out of my body — I could see my body asleep in front of the cold fire, but it was not I. I was drawn to look out upon the city of the gods.
It should have been dark, for it was night, but it was not dark. Everywhere there were lights — lines of light — circles and blurs of light — ten thousand torches would not have been the same. The sky itself was alight — you could barely see the stars for the glow in the sky. I thought to myself "This is strong magic" and trembled. There was a roaring in my ears like the rushing of rivers. Then my eyes grew used to the light and my ears to the sound. I knew that I was seeing the city as it had been when the gods were alive.”

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Donna Tartt photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Joe Biden photo

“You get a tax break for a racehorse, why in God's name couldn't we provide an $8,000 tax credit for everybody who has childcare costs? It would put 720 million women back in the workforce. It would increase the GDP, to sound like a wonk here, by about eight-tenths of one percent. It would grow the economy.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

17 September 2019
Biden vows tax credit will put '720 million women' back in workforce
Joseph Wulfsohn
Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-gaffe-put-720-million-women-in-workforce
2010s, 2019

Robert Southey photo
Joe Biden photo
Pearl S.  Buck photo
David Lynch photo

“When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase "true happiness lies within."”

At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn't tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.
The First Dive, p. 3
Catching the Big Fish (2006)

Prevale photo

“In the air sweet and dancing melodies of the sound, in life music is always the master.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Nell'aria dolci e danzanti melodie del suono, nella vita la musica fa sempre da padrona.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“I turn my gaze to the sky, close my eyes creating a set of thoughts with my mind, embrace the feeling that my heart emanates... letting me live a sweet melody of sound inside me.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Rivolgo il mio sguardo al cielo, chiudo gli occhi creando con la mente un insieme di pensieri, abbraccio il sentimento che emana il mio cuore... lasciando vivere dentro me una dolce melodia del suono.
Source: prevale.net

Julius Streicher photo

“When one listens to your speeches it sounds as if you had always fought against capitalism. The truth is that it was you who gave all the power to capitalism. In this republic capitalism has grown as it had never before. You can think about the old state as you will, one thing is certain: it was not as rotten as the one you brought about! …
What shall one say when Reich president Ebert in his letters addresses the Jewish scoundrel Barmat as "My dear Barmat" and closes with the greeting "Yours Ebert?"”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Despite all the veneration that I feel for this man, whom by the way I respect more as a master saddle-maker than as a Reich president, I simply have to be astonished. Gentlemen, where is the "beauty and dignity"?
01/23/1925, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)
Original: Wenn man Euch reden hört, dann habt Ihr immer den Kapitalismus bekämpft. In Wirklichkeit habt Ihr den Kapitalismus erst in den Sattel gehoben. In dieser Republik hat sich der Kapitalismus ausgewachsen wie niemals zuvor. Mag man über den alten Staat denken wir man will, eines steht fest: so verlumpt war er nicht wie der, den Ihr uns gebracht habt! …
Was soll man dazu sagen, wenn ein Reichspräsident Ebert den jüdischen Schurken Barmat in Briefen mit "Mein lieber Barmat" anredet und ihn am Schlusse mit "Dein Ebert" grüßt? Bei aller Ehrfurcht, die ich vor dem Mann habe, den ich übrigens als Sattlermeister weit mehr schätze denn als Reichspräsident, muss ich mich doch sehr wundern. Meine Herren, wo ist da "Schönheit und Würde"?

Felix Adler photo
Pierre Bouvier photo
Jason Tanamor photo
Chulpan Khamatova photo
C. P. Scott photo
John Mulaney photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“You make interstellar politics sound a very dirty game.”

“It is, but disapproving of dirt doesn’t remove it.”
Source: Empire novels (1950–1952), The Currents of Space (1952), Chapter 14 “The Renegade” (p. 141)

Sydney Smith photo

“My idea of heaven is, eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

View ascribed by Smith to his friend Henry Luttrell; reported in Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), p. 236

Prevale photo

“The sound of your voice animates the beating of my heart.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il suono della tua voce anima il battito del mio cuore.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“Music enters the soul when the sound generates emotion.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La musica entra nell'anima nel momento in cui il suono genera emozione.
Source: prevale.net

Prevale photo

“When music is pure expression, the soul sculpts the sound.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Quando la musica è pura espressione, l'anima scolpisce il suono.
Source: prevale.net

J. Posadas photo
John Steinbeck photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Example (musician) photo

“And I love being under the influence,
under the influence of you
And your voice sounds like it's an instrument
Everything you say rings true”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"Under the Influence" (song)
("Under the Influence" on YouTube (with lyrics)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4Ow3lFtNhI
Studio albums, Playing in the Shadows (2011)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo

“Nothing conduces so emphatically to the harmony of sounds as perfect classical piano play.”

Olga Rotari (1989) Moldovan classical pianist and chamber musician

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoTrlcR4KyA Youtube

Bill Gates photo

“Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

on Twitter https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1250292126643941376?s=20, Apr 14, 2020
COVID-19 pandemic 2020

David Mitchell photo
Napoleon Hill photo
Leopold I of Belgium photo

“I will be more and more concerned with giving you sound and true political ideas, few people are better able to do this than I; since the age of 16 I have been involved in the big affairs of Europe.”

Leopold I of Belgium (1790–1865) German prince who became the first King of the Belgians

A royal puppet show in the Belgian royal family. The education of the first Belgian royal children. (Greet Donckers) http://www.ethesis.net/koningshuis/koningshuis_deel_II.htm#Hoofdstuk_2:_Publieke_sfeer%C2%A0_ AKP, Fund Leopold I, III Archives Conway, Letter from King Leopold I to Prince Leopold, 11 November 1850, 20/3.

M.J. Akbar photo

“Jihad is the signature tune of Islamic history. If today’s Muslim rulers are reluctant to sound that note, it is often because they are concerned about the consequences of failure.”

M.J. Akbar (1951) journalist, author

Source: Akbar, M. J - The shade of swords_ Jihad and the conflict between Islam and christianity-Routledge (2008)

Lucius Shepard photo
Judith Sheindlin photo

“Did that sound like a rhetorical question? It wasn't. I want you to answer it, capisce? Now, THAT was a rhetorical question! See the difference?”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

Source: Quotes From Judge Judy Cases, Dress, Stand, and/or Speak Properly

Bobby Heenan photo

“I'd love to be popular in Barcelona. That sounds like a fun job.”

Bobby Heenan (1944–2017) American professional wrestler, professional wrestling commentator and manager

Misc.

Kendrick Lamar photo