John Philip Sousa Quotes

33 quotes in 535 categories

• My success is not due to any personal superiority over other people.
• I am happy now, to recall that I was not only his son but his companion, and whenever there was a hunting expedition or any…
• I have always believed that 98% of a student's progress is due to his own efforts, and 2% to his teacher.
• Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher than himself.
• Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.
• Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.
• The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.
• You can't drive a Spike with a Tack Hammer
• I still feel the impulse to give young writers a hearing, and I believe I have played more unpublished compositions than any other band leader…
• I forsee a marked deterioration in American musicand a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue—or rather by vice—of the…
• American teachers have one indisputable advantage over foreign ones; they understand the American temperament and can judge its unevenness, its lights and its shadows.
• The average music-lover hears only the production under prevailing conditions.
• To the average mind popular music would mean compositions vulgarly conceived and commonplace in their treatment. That is absolutely false.
• Governmental aid is a drawback rather than an assistance, as, although it may facilitate in the routine of artistic production, it is an impediment to…
• My religion lies in my composition.
• I had found English audiences highly satisfactory. They are the best listeners in the world. Perhaps the music-lovers of some of our larger cities equal…
• America can well expect to develop a goodly amount of composers for she has a goodly number of people.
• I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.
• The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged…
• No nation as young as America can be expected to become immediately a power in the arts.

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