T Bone Burnett Quotes

To curb the machine and limit art to handicraft is a denial of opportunity.

Art is definitely a passion of mine, but one that I couldn't afford to keep-up post-graduation, so I turned to DJing to pay the bills.

Pop artists work really hard, and they might not work for the same things that indie artists do, but they're still musicians, and they're still making art.

The power to hurt ... has evolved in a direct relationship to technological advancement.

In art as in life the valid sacrifices are those that bring no income.

Without intermediate artists, music is what "American Idol" decides is great or made by the very poor, because Sharon Osbourne's made everything free. No, we have to support our local artists. It's just that simple. Otherwise, we will have no art.

The planet is asleep and it's the fault of musicians who are untrue to themselves.

Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.

Too many of these writers in the music papers, they are misunderstanding everything. The disco sound is not art or anything so serious.

I get the most starstruck around musicians. I get tongue-tied and don't know what to say. I'm so jealous of them. When you make a movie, you're constructing something - it's a little bit like making an album. But after musicians make an album, they get to perform it live and experience it in front of a crowd.

I know I am making the choice most dangerous to an artist in valuing life above art.

I doubt that pornography has been good for the advancement of society, but I suspect it’s done wonders for the advancement of computer technology.

Technology will always win. You can delay technology by legal interference, but technology will flow around legal barriers.

Musicians are the architects of heaven.

The crisis is not in the outward technological advancement, but rather in the way we think, and the way we live, and the way we feel. I think that is where a revolution must take place.

Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world.

Even the development of the steam engine owed but little to the advancement of science.

The advancement of technology has probably guided us more than anything else in one direction or another. I don't know, it's hard to say. We're so much more connected, but we've never been more fractured as a culture.

I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological and scientific progress, or that spirit will die. It is incumbent on our educators to remember this; and music is at the top of the spiritual must list. When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost. But as long as we insist on maintaining artistic vitality, we are able to hope in man

Humanity needs this technology as much as it needs all other technologies that have now connected us and set before us the terrifying and wondrous possibility of actually becoming one human race.

I like that I stand for something like American Idol which helps musicians and artists get out there. It's important to have shows like Idol because it's so hard to get into the music industry nowadays - nearly impossible.

Never before has the gap between what we can imagine and what we can accomplish been smaller.

In order to create art today, you have to compromise your art somewhat and be a businessman.

Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

I’m not all about money, but, like most musicians, I am about survival.