You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.
BRIAN ENOMost of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don’t fit in a very interesting way.
More Brian Eno Quotes
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When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
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Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.
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Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.
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I can see the use and value of religion, just as I can see the use of mud wrestling, yoga, astronomy and sadomasochism. but I reject the idea that you can’t be a deep human being without it or any of them.
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Painting, I think it’s like jazz.
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When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.
BRIAN ENO -
I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!
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People always focus on people like me who use synthesizers, right, which are explicitly electronic and therefore obvious.
BRIAN ENO -
I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.
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Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‘Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this’ – have become commonplace in films and music too.
BRIAN ENO -
A big ego isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you’re prepared to take the risk of trying them out.
BRIAN ENO -
Feelings are more dangerous than ideas, because they aren’t susceptible to rational evaluation. They grow quietly, spreading underground, and erupt suddenly, all over the place.
BRIAN ENO -
For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
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When I was working with Talking Heads what would happen typically is that they would go out and start playing a track, and I would always run the tape.
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I think the other thing that’s important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time.
BRIAN ENO






