Top 100 Miles Davis Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “What’s swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don’t have to ask anybody if that’s good music or not. You can always feel it.”

— Miles Davis

52. “I’ve always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that’s where great art and music happens.”

— Miles Davis

53. “Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good.”

— Miles Davis

54. “All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.”

— Miles Davis

55. “I still got my Ferrari.”

— Miles Davis

56. “You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn’t played.”

— Miles Davis

57. “If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can’t be trusted.”

— Miles Davis

58. “In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.”

— Miles Davis

59. “Americans don’t like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don’t like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don’t like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make ’em a lot of money.”

— Miles Davis

60. “You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport Festival.”

— Miles Davis

61. “My father’s rich, my momma’s good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I’ve never suffered and don’t intend to suffer.”

— Miles Davis

62. “I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.”

— Miles Davis

63. “You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.”

— Miles Davis

64. “If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.”

— Miles Davis

65. “If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you’re in love.”

— Miles Davis

66. “I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.”

— Miles Davis

67. “I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.”

— Miles Davis

68. “A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I’m still doing it.”

— Miles Davis

69. “I’ll play it first and figure out what it’s called later.”

— Miles Davis

70. “The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.”

— Miles Davis

71. “At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.”

— Miles Davis

72. “Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!”

— Miles Davis

73. “Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.”

— Miles Davis

74. “White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything – you know what I mean?”

— Miles Davis

75. “But you’ve got to have style in whatever you do – writing, music, painting, fashion, boxing, anything.”

— Miles Davis

76. “As long as I’ve been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.”

— Miles Davis

77. “You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.”

— Miles Davis

78. “Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.”

— Miles Davis

79. “Bebop didn’t have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn’t have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging – but that weren’t sweet.”

— Miles Davis

80. “I’m not messing around with nobody’s woman. If I want a woman I go get her – you know what I mean?”

— Miles Davis

81. “Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He’s nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I’d do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.”

— Miles Davis

82. “We’re not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got ’em, so they can keep ’em.”

— Miles Davis

83. “A legend is an old man with a cane...”

— Miles Davis

84. “It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.”

— Miles Davis

85. “He sounded to me like he’s supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.”

— Miles Davis

86. “Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?”

— Miles Davis

87. “Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk’s music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.”

— Miles Davis

88. “I was minding my own business when something says to me, “you ought to blow trumpet.” I have just been trying ever since.”

— Miles Davis

89. “I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it – like, they say “rock”. Because the white singers can’t sound like James Brown, they call him “soul”. They’ve been doing that for years. That’s the prejudice crap.”

— Miles Davis

90. “I’m out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I’m still playing.”

— Miles Davis

91. “When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads.”

— Miles Davis

92. “You can’t eat a winner’s plaque.”

— Miles Davis

93. “I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He’s still a nice young man, only confused.”

— Miles Davis

94. “I ain’t no entertainer, and ain’t trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.”

— Miles Davis

95. “In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.”

— Miles Davis

96. “I hate how white people always try to take credit for something after they discover it. Like it wasn’t happening before they found out about it – which most times is always late, and they didn’t have nothing to do with it happening. Then, they try to take all the credit, try to cut everybody black out.”

— Miles Davis

97. “I’m a fiend when it comes to good pastry, and the French make the best as far as I’m concerned.”

— Miles Davis

98. “Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.”

— Miles Davis

99. “Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play.”

— Miles Davis

100. “See, music is about style.”

— Miles Davis