Top 50 Robert Fripp Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.”

— Robert Fripp

Featured in: Music Quotes, Short Inspiring Quotes, Art Quotes, Good Vibes Quotes

2. “There are no mistakes, save one: the failure to learn from a mistake.”

— Robert Fripp

3. “Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end.”

— Robert Fripp

4. “Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.”

— Robert Fripp

5. “What we hear is the quality of our listening.”

— Robert Fripp

6. “In strange and uncertain times such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But hope is unreasonable and love is greater even than this. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.”

— Robert Fripp

7. “Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice.”

— Robert Fripp

8. “Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy.”

— Robert Fripp

9. “When music appears which only King Crimson can play, then, sooner or later, King Crimson appears to play the music.”

— Robert Fripp

10. “Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.”

— Robert Fripp

11. “The aim is freedom conscience and truth.”

— Robert Fripp

12. “We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.”

— Robert Fripp

13. “My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility.”

— Robert Fripp

14. “Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.”

— Robert Fripp

15. “The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.”

— Robert Fripp

16. “Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you’d knew Michael, you would know he didn’t agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn’t agree to the point of definition with many things.”

— Robert Fripp

17. “A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable.”

— Robert Fripp

18. “Use your ears to record and your eyes to video.”

— Robert Fripp

19. “In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can’t name it, it means you don’t recognize it.”

— Robert Fripp

20. “What has changed in 40 years? It’s very simple: 40 years ago there was a market economy. Today there is a market society – today everything, including ethics, has a price.”

— Robert Fripp

21. “Expectation closes the door to what is happening in the moment.”

— Robert Fripp

22. “The science is in knowing; the art in perceiving.”

— Robert Fripp

23. “When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.”

— Robert Fripp

24. “Performance is a vehicle for entering different worlds of experiencing.”

— Robert Fripp

25. “Now, if King Crimson accepts responsibility for innovating its own tradition, you can’t accept responsibility for the audience. And there is an enormous tangible weight of expectation, which comes from an audience attending a King Crimson concert.”

— Robert Fripp

26. “If an apprentice does not hear what a master hears, is then that quality not present in the music? Yes and no. In the world in which the apprentice lives no.”

— Robert Fripp

27. “Beginner’s luck is great for beginners.”

— Robert Fripp

28. “The way we describe our world shows how we think of our world. How we think of our world governs how we interpret our world. How we interpret our world directs how we participate in the world. How we participate in the world shapes the world.”

— Robert Fripp

29. “Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.”

— Robert Fripp

30. “Purely by hard work, one can become an artist.”

— Robert Fripp

31. “What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.”

— Robert Fripp

32. “The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.”

— Robert Fripp

33. “I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, ‘If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.’”

— Robert Fripp

34. “I’m not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.”

— Robert Fripp

35. “Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible.”

— Robert Fripp

36. “Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.”

— Robert Fripp

37. “I couldn’t concentrate on music. So I made the choice to give up my career as a musician in the frontline to deal with the business.”

— Robert Fripp

38. “If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?”

— Robert Fripp

39. “Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it’s a necessity in ones everyday performance.”

— Robert Fripp

40. “The concern of the musician is to play the music. It is there demanding to be given sound to.”

— Robert Fripp

41. “My life has improved so much since I stopped doing interviews.”

— Robert Fripp

42. “There is a difference between being a timekeeper and keeping the pulse or being in step with the pulse in the band.”

— Robert Fripp

43. “According to USA today, the average length of an attention span of a man in America is 23 minutes.”

— Robert Fripp

44. “To me, Bill’s musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.”

— Robert Fripp

45. “But above that, most mature adults can hold their attention on something for 45 minutes, whether they like it or not. But above that requires training.”

— Robert Fripp

46. “However, in modern conceptual frameworks there is a more sophisticated view. I would say that the act of music exists in several worlds simultaneously.”

— Robert Fripp

47. “Music never goes away. It is always available, but we’re not always available for music.”

— Robert Fripp

48. “So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.”

— Robert Fripp

49. “And if you are playing in several meters at once, there has to be a – not a rigid – but there definitely has to be a reference to a common pulse in the band.”

— Robert Fripp

50. “If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on?”

— Robert Fripp