Brian Eno

I don't live in the past at all; I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying…

— Brian Eno

Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability…

— Brian Eno

The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.

— Brian Eno

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with…

— Brian Eno

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!

— Brian Eno

I've noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it's far enough in the future.

— Brian Eno

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which…

— Brian Eno

I'd rather hold one note for an hour and modulate it so that it means something than play 3,000 notes in 15 seconds.

— Brian Eno

I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to…

— Brian Eno

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we're really doing is just switching off various kinds of…

— Brian Eno

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That's what surfers do - take control of the situation, then be carried,…

— Brian Eno

People in the arts often want to aim for the biggest, most obvious target, and hit it smack in the bull’s eye.…

— Brian Eno

Zappa was very technical and impressed by things that were musically challenging - weird time signatures, strange keys, awkward chord sequences. Zappa…

— Brian Eno

Although designers continue to dream of 'transparency' - technologies that just do their job without making their presence felt - both creators…

— Brian Eno

A lot of the so-called systems composers have this thing that the system is always right. You don't fiddle with it at…

— Brian Eno

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the…

— Brian Eno

The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

— Brian Eno

Well, I am a dilettante. It's only in England that dilettantism is considered a bad thing. In other countries it's called interdisciplinary…

— Brian Eno

The point about working is not to produce great stuff all the time, but to remain ready for when you can.

— Brian Eno

Given the chance, i'll die like a baby, on some faraway beach, when the season's over.

— Brian Eno

The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.

— Brian Eno

The most important thing in a piece of music is to seduce people to the point where they start searching.

— Brian Eno

I'm actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender.

— Brian Eno

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band

— Brian Eno

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It's still got the same…

— Brian Eno

You can't have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits, it keeps becoming something else.

— Brian Eno

Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable.

— Brian Eno

W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside…

— Brian Eno

I think it's a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.

— Brian Eno

The thing that obsesses me more than anything is waste - the waste of human intelligence and creativity.

— Brian Eno

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

— Brian Eno

I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then…

— Brian Eno

The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does…

— Brian Eno

When I started working on ambient music, my idea was to make music that was more like painting.

— Brian Eno

If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of…

— Brian Eno

People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to…

— Brian Eno

Good teachers realise that the students are the antenna; they are sensing things that the teachers don't yet sense.

— Brian Eno

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven't been made easier technically.

— Brian Eno

I cant duplicate my own successes, because part of the creation of that effect is making something happen that you didn't expect

— Brian Eno

It must be quite mysterious to some people why I bother to carry on. Because, you know, I don't sell that many…

— Brian Eno