Neil Peart quotes
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“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
-- Neil PeartSource : Neil Peart (2011). “Roadshow: Landscape With Drums: A Concert Tour By Motorcycle”, p.122, ECW Press
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“Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand... prejudice, fear and ignorance walk hand-in-hand.”
-- Neil Peart -
“A spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission.”
-- Neil Peart -
“What is a master but a master student? And if that's true, then there's a responsibility on you to keep getting better and to explore avenues of your profession.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.”
-- Neil Peart -
“There's still a lot I'm angry about, a lot of human behaviour that's appalling and despicable, but you choose what you can fight against. I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea and it would change things.”
-- Neil Peart -
“You can surrender without a prayer, but never really pray without surrender. You can fight without ever winning, but never ever win without a fight.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later. I started playing drums at 13, and when I got to the international touring level... I got interested in cross-country skiing, long-distance swimming, bicycling... things that require stamina, not finesse.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Stamina is the force that drives the drumming; it's not really a sprint.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Playing a three-hour Rush show is like running a marathon while solving equations.”
-- Neil Peart -
“If you've got a problem, take it out on a drum.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“I'm a linear thinking agnostic, but not an atheist folks.”
-- Neil Peart -
“...but glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Innocence gave me confidence to go up against reality.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Throw off those chains of reason and your prison disappears.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“From first to last, the peak is never passed. Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Courageous convictions will drag the dream into existence.”
-- Neil Peart -
“You can't get wise with sleep still in your eyes no matter what your dream might be.”
-- Neil Peart -
“You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose a path thats clear. I will choose Freewill.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“Half the world cries Half the world laughs Half the world tries To be the other half”
-- Neil Peart -
“No changes are permanent, but change is.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Anytime I have an idea, I'll make sure that I put it down so that when we do sit down to write an album, I don't have to dream it all out of thin air. I don't have to be creative on the spur of the moment, or spontaneously artistic. I just take advantage of whenever creativity strikes.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“To get nostalgic about other people's music, or even about your own, makes a terrible statement about the condition of your life and your prospects for the future.”
-- Neil Peart -
“If the future's looking dark, We're the ones who have to shine. If there's no one in control, We're the ones who draw the line. Though we live in trying times, We're the ones who have to try. And we know that time has wings, So we're the ones who have to fly.”
-- Neil Peart -
“It's interesting. I've known quite a few good athletes that can't begin to play a beat on the drum set. Most team sport is about the smooth fluidity of hand-eye coordination and physical grace, where drumming is much more about splitting all those things up.”
-- Neil Peart -
“The Seven Cities of Gold always fascinated me. Southwestern U.S. history especially fascinates me. The whole spur of the Spanish exploration of the Southwestern U.S. was the search for these mythical Seven Cities of Gold.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“Each of us A cell of awareness Imperfect and incomplete Genetic blends With uncertain ends On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet”
-- Neil Peart -
“Half the world hates What half the world does every day Half the world waits While half gets on with it anyway”
-- Neil Peart -
“A quality of justice A quantity of light A particle of mercy Makes the color of right”
-- Neil Peart -
“Geddy once joked, 'You're the only guy I know who rehearses to rehearse!”
-- Neil Peart -
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“Don't try to change Doofus, let Doofus change you.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Waiting for the winds of change to sweep the clouds away. Waiting for the rainbow's end to cast its gold your way ... You don't get something for nothing. You can't have freedom for free”
-- Neil Peart -
“I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Extroverts never understand introverts, and it was like that in school days. I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“Living in the limelight: the universal dream for those who wish to SEEM. Those who wish to BE, must put aside the alienation, get on with the fascination, the real relation, the underlying theme.”
-- Neil Peart -
“To me, drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with.”
-- Neil Peart -
“For me, drum elements are like hieroglyphics - I think of a certain physical figure, and a little three-dimensional glyph will appear in my mind as I'm playing.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“If it's cross-country ski season, I'll be out doing that, or snowshoeing up in Quebec. In my California home, I go to the local Y and I like doing yoga. It's been hugely beneficial to me in injury avoidance.”
-- Neil Peart -
“All the world's indeed a stage And we are merely players Performers and portrayers Each another's audience outside the gilded cage”
-- Neil Peart -
“No his mind is not for rent, to any god or government. Always hopeful yet discontent, he knows changes aren't permanent. But change is.”
-- Neil Peart -
“One likes to believe in the freedom of music.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“It's always a happy day when YYZ appears on our luggage tags.”
-- Neil Peart -
“More a paraphrase than a quote, really, but it comes from a prayer which was stitched into a sampler above my grandmother's bed. It began like this: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep...'”
-- Neil Peart -
“Let your heart be the anchor and the beat of your song.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Dedicated to the future, with honor to the past.”
-- Neil PeartSource : Neil Peart (2002). “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road”, p.457, ECW Press
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“You can do a lot in a lifetime, if you don't burn out too fast/You can make the most of the distance/First you need endurance/First you've got to last.”
-- Neil Peart -
“I'm still no good at ball-and-stick games. If I go play golf with the guys, it's intended to be a joke.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Could hell be a place where there is no self-respect? A place where people have no pride in their own existence or behavior, and thus would have none for anyone or anything else?”
-- Neil Peart -
“And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start to mold a new reality closer to the heart.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect, So hard to earn so easily burned In the fullness of time, A garden to nurture and protect It's a measure of a life The treasure of a life is a measure of love and respect, The way you live, the gifts that you give In the fullness of time, It's the only return that you expect”
-- Neil Peart -
“From the point of ignition. To the final drive. The point of the journey is not to arrive.”
-- Neil PeartSource : "Rush – Prime Mover". Song by Neil Peart, 1987.
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“I can worship Nature, and that fulfills my need for miracles and beauty. Art gives a spiritual depth to existence -- I can find worlds bigger and deeper than my own in music, paintings, and books. And from my friends and family I receive the highest benediction, emotional contact, and personal affirmation. I can bow before the works of Man, from buildings to babies, and that fulfills my need for wonder. I can believe in the sanctity of Life, and that becomes the Revealed Word, to live my life as I believe it should be, not as I'm told to by self-appointed guides.”
-- Neil Peart -
“How can anybody be enlightened? Truth is after all so poorly lit”
-- Neil Peart -
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“Look in, look the storm in the eye. Look out, to the sea and the sky. Look around, at the sight and sound. Look in, look out, look around.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Everything in moderation, with occasional excess.”
-- Neil PeartSource : Neil Peart (2002). “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road”, p.354, ECW Press
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“Howard Roark stood as a role model for me - as exactly the way I already was living. Even at that tender age [18] I already felt that. And it was intuitive or instinctive or inbred stubbornness or whatever; but I had already made those choices and suffered for them.”
-- Neil Peart -
“I think everything I do has Howard Roark [hero of The Fountainhead] in it, you know, as much as anything. The person I write for is Howard Roark.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“Lessons taught but never learned, all around us anger burns. Guide the future by the past. Long ago the mould was cast.”
-- Neil Peart -
“I am a big fan of Dos Passos' stylistic ability, his poetic approach to prose, but the ideas presented in the songs are quite different from those which he exemplified.”
-- Neil Peart -
“The tarot card 'The Tower' seemed a chilling reflection of the events of September 11, 2001.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“Lotus-land as it appears in 'Free Will' is simply a metaphor for an idealized background, a 'land of milk and honey.' It is sometimes also used as a pejorative name for Los Angeles, though that was not in my mind when I wrote it.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep...”
-- Neil Peart -
“No one gets to their heaven without a fight.”
-- Neil Peart -
“We're only immortal for a limited time.”
-- Neil PeartSource : Neil Peart (2002). “Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road”, p.6, ECW Press
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“I don't like lyrics that are just thrown together, that were obviously written as you went along, or the song was already written and the guy made up the lyrics in five minutes.”
-- Neil Peart -
“It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later.”
-- Neil Peart -
“I had spindly little ankles, and growing up in Canada, I couldn't skate. I was no good at any sports so was very much a pariah through those adolescent years.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Too much attention and hoopla doesn't agree with my temperament.”
-- Neil Peart -
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“I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.”
-- Neil Peart -
“Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.”
-- Neil Peart -
“I want to be an improviser, and I've worked very hard at that. It's an art. You don't just play whatever comes into your head; you have to be very deliberate about what you do.”
-- Neil Peart
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