Herbie Hancock

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music

I'm always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.

But I have to be careful not to let the world dazzle me so much that I forget that I'm a husband and a father.

As a human being, I'm concerned about the world that I live in. So, I'm concerned about peace. I'm concerned about - about man's inhumanity to man. I'm concerned about the environment.

World peace is no longer some pie-in-the-sky thing, because no single person or country is going to solve it on their own.

You can practice to attain knowledge, but you can't practice to attain wisdom.

Without wisdom, the future has no meaning, no valuable purpose.

The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.

It's easy to get sidetracked with technology, and that is the danger, but ultimately you have to see what works with the music and what doesn't. In a lot of cases, less is more. In most cases, less is more.

I don't see how we can have both the freedoms we had before and the safety net that we all need considering the way the world is today. And that's just because human beings can't trust each other. We've given in over and over to some of the darkest elements that exist in life itself.

Being vulnerable is allowing yourself to trust. That's hard for a lot of people to do. They feel a lot more secure if they kind of put walls around themselves. Then they don't have to trust anybody but themselves.

When I was six, my best friend's parents bought him a piano. My mother noticed that every time I would go to his house, the first thing I would say to him was 'Levester' - His name was Levester - I said, 'Levester, can I go play your piano?' So, on my 7th birthday, my parents bought me a piano.

In World War II, jazz absolutely was the music of freedom, and then in the Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain, same thing. It was all underground, but they needed the food of freedom that jazz offered.

It's part of life to have obstacles. It's about overcoming obstacles that's the key to happiness.

It is people's hearts that move the age.

Music is the tool to express life - and all that makes a difference.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

Back in the day for me was a great time in my life - I was in my 20s. Most people refer to their experiences in their twenties as being a highlight in their life. It's a period of time where you often develop your own way, your own sound, your own identity, and that happened with me, when I was with a great teacher - Miles Davis.