Instrument Quotes

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. (Ambrose Bierce)
Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement. View quote
Willa Cather
You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail. View quote
Charlie Parker
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament. View quote
Alanis Morissette
It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself. View quote
Johann Sebastian Bach
Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime. View quote
John Ruskin
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. View quote
Calvin Coolidge
Every contrivance of man, every tool, every instrument, every utensil, every article designed for use, of each and every kind, evolved from a very simple beginnings. (Robert Collier)
Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be the system of a regular government. View quote
Jeremy Bentham
Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force ... is the most potent instrument available in mankind's quest for peace and security. View quote
Martin Luther King Jr.
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. View quote
Peter Drucker
What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument. View quote
C. S. Lewis
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society. View quote
John Adams
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love. View quote
Charlotte Brontë
Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture. View quote
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers. View quote
Simone Weil
ACCORD, n. Harmony. ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries. (Ambrose Bierce)
CLARIONET, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet two clarionets. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work. View quote
Joshua Reynolds
(Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience. View quote
Willie Nelson
In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused. View quote
Ernest Hemingway