Unity

FDtD p. 466

"...if one asks why in the face of such divisions, one speaks of unity at all, the answer for all periods is that the ultimate unifying force of an age is its predicaments: the urgent demands, the obstacles to social peace or progress, the need for new art that Stendhal pointed out--things that alert minds cannot ignore: every living thinker or artist works to fulfil these calls or deny them in some way."

Perhaps the best sentence I've ever read with two colons, not to mention a --.

Duke

p. 167

"Here I am fifty years later, still getting cats to come out of bed, so that I can listen to them."

p. 168

"If you took the time to study the construction of fifty or so of Ellington's tracks... you would see over and over the composer's unique skill in conveying a sense of uninhinited party on the surface level but underpinning it with sober calculation in the music's inner workings."

p. 170 

"Goodman was a perfectionist who was rarely pleased with the musicians he hired, and they burnt out on his intensity, many leaving the band after only a short stint. Ellington's orchestra thrived, in contrast, because the boss didn't demand perfection, and instead built everything in the ensemble's repertoire on the demonstrated strengths of hsi personnel."

Intentionality

p. 15

"When a group is working together effectively, the individual musicians don't need to play so many notes... when the band's rhythmic cohesion is floundering, each individual in the group is tempted to overplay... lots of activity is no substitute for skilled cohesion."

p. 25

"Phrases move effortlessly from one type of subdivision of the beat into another. In my own musical education, the moment of success came when I found I could play rhythmic patterns in the music that I could no longer analyze in real time."

p. 26

"Above all, I like to hear a clear sense of intentionality in a musician's phrasing... After I have heard a phrase played with intentionality, I feel as if it is absolutely the only combination of notes that would have fit the circumstances."

"Dizzy Gillespie once claimed that the first thing that came to his mind when improvising was the rhythmic structure of the line... lesser horn players seem to end their phrases when they run out of breath."

p. 27

"it isn't a matter of loudness or energy, but rather a sense of clear intention and personal agency embodied in the melodic lines."

"(When stealing from other players... choose a different instrument from your own, and people won't notice the theft)"

p. 28

"The best way to open up your ears to phrasing is by listening to the top tier jazz vocalists."

Dynamics

p. 38

"musicians often find it difficult to agree on a change from loud to soft, or vice versa, unless they are listening closely to each other and are intimately in sync, the result is often long stretches without much dynamic variation."

p. 39

"Jazz is a hot art form. It thrives on intensity... as a result, louder is almost always the easier option on the bandstand, especially for inexperienced performers."

"Audiences burn out on unrelenting volume"

https://youtu.be/6BD8-aYrKew

p. 43

"I have so much faith in this essential translucency of music that I trust the songs more than biographical facts."

p. 48

"When one of his band members succeeded in playing an especially exciting solo that generated lots of applause from the audience, Mingus would yell at him: "Don't do that again!""

p. 49

"Jazz... is for those who want to be in attendance when the miracle happens."

Popper Contra Empiricism

C&F p. 23

"if we are doubtful about an assertion, then the normal procedure is to test it, rather than ask for its sources"

XIV

"there are all kinds of sources of our knowledge, but none has authority."

"the empericists questions 'How do you know? What is thr source of your assertion?'... are entirely misconceived: they are questions that beg for an authoritarian answer."

XV

"'Who should rule?' should be replaced with how can we organize our political institutions so that bad or incompetent rulers (whom we should try not to get, but whom we so easily might get all the same) cannot do much damage?"

"I propose to replace ... the question of the sources of our knowledge by an entirely different question: 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?'

This critical rationalism... "merely puts the finishing touch to Kant's own critical philosophy"

XVI

"The advance of knowledge consists, mainly, in the modification of earlier knowledge."

"Pessimistic and optimistic epistemlogies are about equally mistaken."

"...although, as Democritus said, the truth is hidden in the deep, we can probe into the deep."

"Clarity and distinctness are not criteria of truth, but such things as obscurity and confusion may indicate error."

Point 8!!!

"our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."

"while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal."

Some more equal than others...

The Beginning

TBOI p. 446

"But almost no one is creative in fields in which they are pessimistic."

"...frame the growth of knowledge as a continual transition from problems to better problems."

p. 447

"Rejecting the idea that we are 'nearly there' is a necessary condition for the avoidance of dogmatism, stagnation and tyranny."

p. 457

"But our capacity to cope with, and enjoy, changes in our technology, lifestyle, ethical norms and so on has been increasing too, with the weakening and extinction of some of the anti-rational memes that used to sabotage it."

Unsustainable

(From the summary)

"Static societies eventually fail because their characteristic inability to create knowledge rapidly must eventually turn some problem into a catastrophe... history is the history of ideas, not the mechanical effects of biogeography."

TBoI p. 436

"The fact the reliance on specific antibiotics is unsustainable is only an indictment from the point of view of someone who expects a sustainable lifestyle. But in reality there is no such thing. Only progress is sustainable."