Top 35 Dave Brubeck Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Jazz is about freedom within discipline.”

— Dave Brubeck

2. “If there’s a deadline, I work late. If not, I like to have normal hours, and get up early and work. When things are going well, I hate to quit. And then I’ll work ’till exhausted.”

— Dave Brubeck

3. “When things are going well, I hate to quit.”

— Dave Brubeck

4. “You have to be taught to hate.”

— Dave Brubeck

5. “We don’t know the power that’s within our own bodies.”

— Dave Brubeck

6. “Your mother’s heartbeat is the first sound you ever hear and your own heartbeat is the last.”

— Dave Brubeck

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7. “The secret of a great melody is a secret.”

— Dave Brubeck

8. “I never wanted this kind of life that Im still living.”

— Dave Brubeck

9. “I knew I wanted to write on religious themes when I was a GI in World War II. I saw and experienced so much violence that I thought I could express my outrage best with music.”

— Dave Brubeck

10. “Probably the most profound thing in the Bible is ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.’ This is what, to me, is the essence of Christianity.”

— Dave Brubeck

11. “When I was first aware that I couldn’t read music I didn’t know I couldn’t read because I could play the music that was in front of me.”

— Dave Brubeck

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

12. “Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.”

— Dave Brubeck

13. “It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it’s to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn’t say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.”

— Dave Brubeck

14. “Jazz stands for freedom.”

— Dave Brubeck

15. “What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.”

— Dave Brubeck

16. “I’m always hoping for the nights that are inspired where you almost have an out of body experience.”

— Dave Brubeck

17. “I wasn’t allowed to play in some universities in the United States and out of twenty-five concerts, twenty-three were canceled unless I would substitute my black bass player for my old white bass player, which I wouldn’t do.”

— Dave Brubeck

18. “Once when asked how I would like to be remembered, I answered, “As someone who opened doors.”

— Dave Brubeck

19. “I played a lot of sports and it’s the plays in basketball that weren’t worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don’t know the power that’s within our own bodies.”

— Dave Brubeck

20. “Every individual should be expressing themselves, whether a politician or a minister or a policeman.”

— Dave Brubeck

21. “Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.”

— Dave Brubeck

22. “Damn it, when I’m bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic-take it or leave it.”

— Dave Brubeck

23. “I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.”

— Dave Brubeck

24. “One of the reasons I believe in jazz is that the oneness of man can come through the rhythm of your heart. It’s the same anyplace in the world, that heartbeat. It’s the first thing you hear when you’re born – or before you’re born – and it’s the last thing you hear.”

— Dave Brubeck

25. “Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.”

— Dave Brubeck

26. “I was always very aware of drummers. My oldest brother Henry was a drummer, and he drummed on everything in the house from the kitchen sink to stovepipes. He was the first drummer in the Gil Evans Orchestra, so you’ve got to know how great he was.”

— Dave Brubeck

27. “Concord, California was a great place to grow up.”

— Dave Brubeck

28. “The first choral music I remember hearing was Handel’s ‘Messiah’ when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast it over the radio.”

— Dave Brubeck

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

29. “No dictatorship can tolerate jazz. It is the first sign of a return to freedom.”

— Dave Brubeck

30. “I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.”

— Dave Brubeck

31. “I have more energy at the end than I do at the beginning. You can be so beat up that you can scarcely walk on stage but when you get to the piano the excitement kicks in, you forget about being tired.”

— Dave Brubeck

32. “I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver’s license, and that’s where she’d want to go, so I’d go take her there for two weeks.”

— Dave Brubeck

33. “I knew even if I’m a cowboy, I’m going to be involved in jazz in some way.”

— Dave Brubeck

34. “Most of the international acceptance of jazz education can be traced to the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, and the wonderful program they inaugurated.”

— Dave Brubeck

35. “You could play probably a span of 50 years of me playing St. Louis Blues, and most of the time it will be different every time.”

— Dave Brubeck