Best 113 quotes of Herbie Hancock on MyQuotes

A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students' creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.

A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He's above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being.

All you have to do is play one note. But it needs to be the right note.

As a human being, I'm concerned about the world that I live in.So, I'm concerned about peace.I'm concerned about man's inhumanity to man. I'm concerned about the environment.

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

Back in the day for me was a great time in my life - I was in my 20s. Most people refer to their experiences in their twenties as being a highlight in their life. It's a period of time where you often develop your own way, your own sound, your own identity, and that happened with me, when I was with a great teacher - Miles Davis.

Being vulnerable is allowing yourself to trust. That's hard for a lot of people to do. They feel a lot more secure if they kind of put walls around themselves. Then they don't have to trust anybody but themselves. But to allow you to trust not only yourself but trust others means - is what's required to be vulnerable, and to have that kind of trust takes courage.

Buddhism has turned me on to my humanness, and is challenging my humanness so that I can become more human.

But I have to be careful not to let the world dazzle me so much that I forget that I'm a husband and a father.

Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept. He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

Creativity shouldn't be following radio; it should be the other way around.

Don't be afraid to expand yourself, to step out of your comfort zone. That's where the joy and the adventure lie.

Fact is that I played piano and performed, as a young kid, a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Don't forget I was only eleven-years-old and to be on the stage at that age had tremendous impact on me. Basically love for classical music and performing as a kid on the big stage probably led toward this decision, which meant that music is going to be my big love but also my profession.

Forget about trying to compete with someone else. Create your own pathway. Create your own new vision.

Getting the Oscar had the biggest impression on me.

Globalization means we have to re-examine some of our ideas, and look at ideas from other countries, from other cultures, and open ourselves to them. And that's not comfortable for the average person.

I don't go around, the way many musicians do, with earbuds in my ear listening to my iPod all day and just sticking my head in the music all the time.

I don't look at music from the standpoint of being a musician; I look at it from the standpoint of being a human being.

I don't mind being classified as a jazz artist, but I do mind being restricted to being a jazz artist. My foundation has been in jazz, though I didn't really start out that way. I started in classical music, but my formative years were in jazz, and it makes a great foundation.

I don't think there are any pure Africans of the African Americans, but the African part of our history was pretty much taken away from us during slavery, so the 60s gave us a chance, because of the civil rights movement, to kind of re-examine and make some sort of formal connection to our African-ness.

I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.

I feel a lot more secure about the directions I take, than I might have, had I not practiced Buddhism.

If you're not judging what happens, then you're trusting what others are doing, what you're playing, and trusting what you're playing.And it can lead you to other ideas, to something maybe you hadn't expressed before.

I got a chance to work with Miles Davis, and that changed everything for me, 'cause Miles really encouraged all his musicians to reach beyond what they know, go into unknown territory and explore. It's made a difference to me and the decisions that I've made over the years about how to approach a project in this music.

I have to care and I have to be honest and have the courage to be vulnerable. If that happens, then that's the best I can do. To just be a puppet for the audience is not very courageous. Just to do whatever they say they want - because a lot of times people will hear something new that they hadn't heard before and get turned on by a new experience and will want to hear more of that.

I hope to use dialogue and culture as a means of bringing people of various cultures together, and using that as a way to resolve conflict.

I keep recycling and repackaging music that I've done in the past, as though I can't write anymore. Like, okay, I'm done with that. But I need to kind of prod myself again into come on, Herbie, get off your duff and start writing some new music.

I learned the importance of being nonjudgmental, taking what happens and trying to make it work.That's something you should apply to life.

I like the idea of an eclectic approach, incorporating jazz with other forms and other genres of music.

I like to be on the edge, on the cutting edge, or be into the unknown, into the territory where I have to depend on being in the moment and depending on my instincts.

I look for what's of value and extract that. I don't look to criticize.

I'm always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.

I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.

I'm aware that a lot of what is happening in jazz has not had a very dynamic change in a long time.

I'm one of the people who was a pioneer in encouraging musicians, early in the game, to get interested in technology, and now all the musicians are getting into it.

I'm very conscious of the idea of trying to each time present something that I haven't presented before. It's a challenge to me to find something new, to find something innovative, but it's also very exciting.

I never dreamed I would be a Goodwill Ambassador, and for UNESCO. Perfect organization. It is apolitical and it's about education, science and culture. I mean that is what I live. That is what UNESCO is really about; it's all about bringing human beings together with one common goal, which is to move human kind forward.

Inspiration is constantly in the air. It's up to us to develop the sensitivity to pick up on it.

In the past, there's always been one leader that has led the pack to development of the music.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

In World War II, jazz absolutely was the music of freedom, and then in the Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain, same thing. It was all underground, but they needed the food of freedom that jazz offered.

I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer -- and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had.

I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.

I think I was supposed to play jazz.

I think risk-taking is a great adventure. And life should be full of adventures.

It might be something as simple as saying the right word to the right person at the right time-and that could change the course of history. You never really know. But the whole thing is to work at the process of being in sync with the universe, so that everything will align at the proper time so that you can deliver that which is your life mission. And that's why we're here as individuals. And then there's our contribution to the collective. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

It's not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

It's not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.