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Thinking Quotes by Brian Eno

41 Thinking quotes by Brian Eno

All Thinking quotes Brian Eno’s page

Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think, a quiet backdrop for the mind. Eno points out that lyrics can mislead and that many producers simply repeat old ideas. He also warns that new technology isn’t transparent and that future movements might arise from unexpected places like granola‑eating idealists.

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Painting, I think it's like jazz.

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Think inside the work - outside the work

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Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.

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It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of.

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I think we're about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.

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I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.

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I think audiences are quite comfortable watching something coming into being.

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I do sometimes look back at things I've written in the past, and think, 'I just don't remember being the person who…

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

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I think that sex, drugs, art and religion very much overlap with one another and sometimes one becomes another.

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

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I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn't mean that they are going…

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People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There…

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I think the idea that people walk around to music is very interesting. They are actually creating the soundtrack to their lives…

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The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part…

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I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never…

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I think that there's something that I still like about the fact of a package, like the latest report from somebody. "Okay,…

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Something I've realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable…

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If there is a new fascism, it won't come from skinheads and punks; it will come from people who eat granola and…

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Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences... That solves a lot of problems…

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You can hear the profile of a sound, in retrospect, so much more clearly than you did at the time. And I…

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If you think of the way a composer or say a pop arranger works - he has an idea and he writes…

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There's a kind of edge to what you're doing, the kind of leading edge of what you're doing. Inside that edge [are…

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I still do mostly listen to CDs. I think that every format really is a different way of listening. If you take…

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Often, I think you find that you're enjoying certain things, you've got this new way of listening, and you find that you…

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Quite often, and in fact more often, I would say, I'm struggling all the way through to think, "What is it I…

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I think that's very significant that we're so attached to the idea now of - it was something I advocated for years,…

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In terms of what has been happening recently, there have been, I think, some really interesting new instruments that have come out…

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I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody…

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Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

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I think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize…

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You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I'm obviously in the latter camp.…

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Everybody thinks that when new technologies come along that they're transparent and you can just do your job well on it. But…

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I think, if you spend a day or - as many people do - a life working only with that aspect of…

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We're going through this super-uptight era, which I think comes entirely from literacy, actually. It's the result of machines that were designed…

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I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, 'What else can you do with…

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When I've finally got the title, I think, "Okay, yes, now I know where we are. Now I know what it is.…

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I know that if I had a television in my flat I would convince myself that everything on it was really interesting.…

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When you build a building, you finish a building. You don't finish a garden; you start it, and then it carries on…

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

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More by Brian Eno

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

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.

Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.

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

You can't really imagine music without technology.

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

I despise computers in many ways. I think they’re hopelessly underevolved and overrated.

I think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize as being…

I think that's very significant that we're so attached to the idea now of - it was something I advocated for years, that you…

If you watch any good player, they're using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They're moving…

Songs that don't depend on composition depend instead on performance - so the fire has to be there in the playing.

I can see the use and value of religion, just as I can see the use of mud wrestling, yoga, astronomy and sadomasochism. but…

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.

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

I had an interesting day. I was in the studio with a group of musicians, who shall remain nameless, and I said to them…