Quincy Jones, born on March 14, 1933, in Chicago, is a legendary American record producer, composer, trumpeter, and conductor. With a career spanning over seven decades, he has left an indelible mark on the music industry. Jones started as a jazz trumpeter and later became a renowned arranger and conductor. His notable achievements include producing for artists like Frank Sinatra, working as a film composer, and collaborating with Michael Jackson on iconic albums such as “Thriller.” Jones is a recipient of numerous awards, including 28 Grammy Awards, and has been recognized for his humanitarian efforts. His influence extends beyond his own performances, making him a pivotal figure in shaping the careers of many musicians across various genres.
Quincy Jones Quotes
1. “Not one ounce of my self worth depends on your acceptance of me.”
— Quincy Jones
2. “Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. ‘Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it’s done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.’”
— Quincy Jones
3. “I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you’re supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.”
— Quincy Jones
4. “The process is the most beautiful part.”
— Quincy Jones
5. “Excellence isn’t an act, it’s a habit.”
— Quincy Jones
6. “Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.”
— Quincy Jones
8. “Let’s not get too full of ourselves. Let’s leave space for God to come into the room.”
— Quincy Jones
9. “If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.”
— Quincy Jones
10. “Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.”
— Quincy Jones
11. “Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.”
— Quincy Jones
12. “I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, “Ain’t that the truth.””
— Quincy Jones
13. “I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.”
— Quincy Jones
14. “I tell my kids and I tell proteges, always have humility when you create and grace when you succeed, because its not about you. You are a terminal for a higher power. As soon as you accept that, you can do it forever.”
— Quincy Jones
15. “The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.”
— Quincy Jones
16. “Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.”
— Quincy Jones
17. “When you’re over the hill, that’s when you pick up speed.”
— Quincy Jones
18. “You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.”
— Quincy Jones
19. “Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That’s the soul of a country.”
— Quincy Jones
20. “Young people should travel, and they don’t. You can’t know if you don’t go.”
— Quincy Jones
21. “Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.”
— Quincy Jones
22. “A person’s age can be determined by the degree of pain he experiences when he comes in contact with a new idea.”
— Quincy Jones
23. “Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.”
— Quincy Jones
24. “I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.”
— Quincy Jones
25. “A lot of the guys were like that – Oscar Pettiford – they just took me under their wing, and that’s why I automatically help young people. I just love it, because they did that for me.”
— Quincy Jones
26. “Billy Strayhorn wrote Multicolored Blue. Billy to me is the boss of the arrangers.”
— Quincy Jones
27. “Well, listen, anger doesn’t get anything done, so you have to find out: How do you make it work? That’s why I was always maniacal about transforming every problem into a puzzle which I can solve. I can solve a puzzle – a problem just stresses me out.”
— Quincy Jones
28. “The climate in the ’50s and ’60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.”
— Quincy Jones
29. “I’m a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from.”
— Quincy Jones
30. “I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.”
— Quincy Jones
31. “A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.”
— Quincy Jones
32. “My son is a hip-hop producer.”
— Quincy Jones
33. “You cannot get an A if you’re afraid of getting an F.”
— Quincy Jones
34. “A bad song, the three best singers in the world cannot save it, and that’s the bottom line.”
— Quincy Jones
35. “I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.”
— Quincy Jones
36. “It’s the attitude about life, man. Looking at the light instead of the dark. Looking at love instead of fear.”
— Quincy Jones
37. “My grandmother had this high-tech security system – a rusty nail she used to lock the door.”
— Quincy Jones
38. “I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.”
— Quincy Jones
39. “I don’t deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn’t deserve that, either. So I’ll keep it.”
— Quincy Jones
40. “I was the most subtle person in the world.”
— Quincy Jones
41. “Some summers my father would take us down to visit our grandmother in Louisville, who was an ex-slave, Susan Jones, and she had a shotgun shack they call it, and no electricity, a well in the back, a coal stove, kerosene lamps.”
— Quincy Jones
42. “We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block – it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America – every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too.”
— Quincy Jones
43. “A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer – you put a great song on top of that, you’re really in great shape!”
— Quincy Jones
44. “You have to know that your real home is within.”
— Quincy Jones
45. “Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush.”
— Quincy Jones
46. “We stole a box of honey jars one time and went out in the woods and took care of the whole box. I don’t think I touched honey again for 20 years. I never wanted to see honey again.”
— Quincy Jones
47. “The only music I don’t like is bad music.”
— Quincy Jones
48. “Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.”
— Quincy Jones
49. “I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.”
— Quincy Jones
50. “I was married for 36 years but now I’m free.”
— Quincy Jones
51. “I’m never in my life going to do a record that’s a tribute to myself. I don’t need it.”
— Quincy Jones
52. “Eight kids and a stepmother, and I just wanted to be out of there and so when I got a scholarship from Boston to the Schillinger House, which is now the Berklee School of Music, I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
— Quincy Jones
53. “I’m just a musician and a record producer.”
— Quincy Jones
54. “Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.”
— Quincy Jones
55. “I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we’ve had in a long time. It’s sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America.”
— Quincy Jones
56. “It was messed up, because in 1947 my family moved to Seattle and I had to get up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning to catch the ferry back to Bremerton every morning because I was Boys Club president.”
— Quincy Jones
57. “I’ve met every freak in the business.”
— Quincy Jones
58. “Editing while you’re writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.”
— Quincy Jones
59. “It’s easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.”
— Quincy Jones
60. “If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You’re dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.”
— Quincy Jones
61. “After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it’s worse than ever.”
— Quincy Jones
62. “We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.”
— Quincy Jones
63. “All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.”
— Quincy Jones
64. “If I don’t have a mother, I’ll let music be my mother.”
— Quincy Jones
65. “Imagine what a harmonious world it…”
— Quincy Jones
66. “When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.”
— Quincy Jones
67. “China’s got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain’t right.”
— Quincy Jones
68. “My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade.”
— Quincy Jones
69. “I don’t remember feeling love.”
— Quincy Jones
70. “I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe.”
— Quincy Jones
71. “I never felt like I had a mother.”
— Quincy Jones
72. “It’s amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don’t have anything else to do.”
— Quincy Jones
73. “I’d been in love before – I was always in love.”
— Quincy Jones
74. “I’m a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.”
— Quincy Jones
