Russell Lynes Quotes

I find early jazz to be the most revolutionary music of its time.

Modernity is disruptive, and I endorse that.

The '60s were a time of great change in American music.

Some people just don't want to see change, but thankfully there are a lot of people more optimistic for something new in music, even with the bigger picture like with Obama getting elected.

We're on the cusp, on the brink, of enormous change in this country.

Jazz is the folk music of the machine age.

The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry from the past, it can draw that only from the future. It cannot start upon its work before it has stricken off all superstition concerning the past

The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry from the past, it can draw that only from the future.

We have really made an advance in civilization, that the principles on which our political and social order rest are in harmony with the laws of the universe, that we have set up an ideal which may never in genuine happiness certain...We are getting rid of old world things and becoming accustomed to the new. We are forming new creeds, new judgments, new manners; we are becoming a new race of men.

Note the startling regularity through history with which society martyrs the rebel in one generation and worships him in the next.

Revolution ain't nothing but an extent of evolution; Evolution is a fact of nature. So when old folks tell me that they don't understand hip hop and the music is too loud, well I guess it means you're not supposed to be in there.

We are living in a state of constant scientific revolution. There is not a single area that you can name that is now seen as it was seen a hundred years ago. Nothing is left of the world view of one hundred years ago.

If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

The world around us is in a sea change, and I think the glory of art is that it cannot only survive change, it can lead it

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

All true tradition usually appears revolutionary.

At every level the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different

The genuine values in America arose from rational thought and breaking with tradition, not from blind allegiance to dirt and cloth.

There is every indication that the period ahead will be an innovative one, one of rapid change in technology , society , economy , and institutions .

Revolutions never go backward.

The social revolution...cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped itself of all superstitions concerning the past.

Nothing has changed, or will change. So we must change it.

All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.

This is all very nice, because the ideas that Jack and the Beat generation stood for are needed today more than ever. But I'm not so interested in nostalgia. I'm interested in the future.

Evolution is always the work of pioneers, and their followers are always small in number. This following is not a clique; it is the result of all the existing social forces; it is composed of all those who through innate or acquired capacity are ready to represent the existing degree of human revolution.