Jacques Attali Quotes

The world is full of sounds. We just don't usually hear them as music.

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.

You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.

For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible.

Silence is the last thing the world will ever hear from me.

There are many, many nouns for the act of looking - a glance, a glimpse, a peep - but there's no noun for the act of listening. In general, we don't think primarily about sound. So I have a different perspective on the world; I can construct soundscapes that have an effect on people, but they don't know why. It's a sort of subterfuge.

If sound is music and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound. If the sound is effective, it should actually have a chemical - some sort of physiological - effect on the listener, so he doesn't have to hear that sound again.

We do not realize the sound the world makes -- unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra.

There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.

In noise can be read the codes of life, the relations among men. Clamour, Melody, Dissonance, Harmony; when it is fashioned by man with specific tools, when it invades man’s time, when it becomes sound, noise is the source of the purpose and power, of the dream – Music.

Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.

Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

I can't hear anything, John. Please, would you put on your headphones?

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.

One can hear all that's going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what's going on in this house.

Silence is our enemy, and sound is our weapon.

We hear the ambient noise of children singing. We hear lions and tigers roar. Hyenas laugh. Some jungle bird or howler monkey declares its existence, screeching a maniac's gibberish. Our entire world, always doing battle against the silence and obscurity of death.

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

People aren't hearing all the music.

Only dead people need loud music, you know.

What's that sound I hear? It's just my lifetime It's whistling past my ear

Unlike seeing, where one can look away, one cannot 'hear away' but must listen ... hearing implies already belonging together in such a manner that one is claimed by what is being said.

You tell yourself that noise is what defines silence. Without noise, silence would not be golden. Noise is the exception.