Check out some of these amazing quotes all about the healing power of music
Sometimes, we just want an expert opinion. There are always those people we trust more than anyone else to deliver us truth and reason. For instance, you wouldn’t take a medication unless your doctor prescribed it to you. The same goes for recommendations on pretty much anything else. You’re more likely to eat at a restaurant that a friend recommended to you, and less likely if it’s recommended by someone you like less.
Whenever we see a trend in pop psychology, it’s natural to feel skeptical. I mean, this is the human brain we’re talking about. It’s hard to believe that any simple solution could be enough to make us feel better, especially with all the false statements about things like binaural beats or vagus nerve stimulation attacking our feeds constantly. It’s perfectly natural to assume that music therapy, which started getting super popular in the last decade or so, is just another one of these fads.
Music therapy is actually a super well-established treatment for a range of problems, and it’s been proven to work time and time again. If you’re ever looking for answers and new ways to heal, music therapy is always a great route to pick, since there’s something for everyone!
Still not totally convinced? Here are a few great quotes that will really get you on board with music therapy from doctors, artists, and historical figures!
Plato is one of the most influential philosophers of all time. He’s probably most well-known for his work around ethics, famously penning Plato’s Republic, a dialogue surrounding a fictional republic, in which two people discuss how the government should be run in accordance with their own morality.
Of course, Plato also had something to say on a number of other topics as well, including music. Now, they didn’t have the same scientific research methods or psychological knowledge we have today, but, even in Ancient Greece, Plato was able to recognize the incredible power music had on our realities. Music, according to Plato, is the thing that gives the universe meaning and heart. It adds balance and joy to people's dull lives. It carries our minds off to a place we didn’t think possible. To Plato, music is the driving force of everything.
Dr. Oliver Sacks is probably the most lauded neuroscientist of all time. He was highly accomplished as a doctor and constantly wrote books about his field. One particular book he wrote later in life, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, detailed in-depth how exactly music functions in the human brain. Really, if you’re interested in psychology, the human mind, or any other aspect of human nature, Oliver Sacks probably wrote about it, and his take is absolutely worth the read. His stories are engaging and his wit and comedy are on point.
In this quote, Oliver Sacks talks about his research and understanding of music in conjunction with mental conditions that make the brain less orderly. Music therapy has been proven to have universally positive effects on those with degenerative neurological conditions, and here Dr. Sacks explains how music works to make the brain function. It rewrites our brains’ pathways so they’re much more functional.
If you want a trusted source to tell you about the positive effects of music therapy, there’s nobody better than Dr. Oliver Sacks!
No matter what your opinion on his work is, we can all agree that Billy Joel is one of the most influential musicians of recent memory. Nobody can forget the incredible 14-part a cappella classic, The Longest Time, or the song that’s just nostalgia in a bottle, Piano Man. If anyone’s going to understand the way music affects regular people, it’s Billy Joel.
In this quote, Billy Joel expresses his opinion that music has healing properties. So far, there hasn’t been a single culture ever discovered that hasn’t used music in some way. It’s an absolutely universal part of our language. Music has a way of affecting everyone deep down in a way that makes us human. It’s our creativity incarnate, so it really gets to us as people.
Victor Hugo is often considered one of the greatest writers of all time, writing the original books of both Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, both of which have more recently inspired massive musicals. His work addresses the need for compassion and human dignity in a world full of poverty and cruelty.
Victor Hugo recognizes that music is not just entertainment. It’s a deep emotional necessity. When words fail, and silence is unbearable, music becomes the only way to speak the unspeakable. He also recognizes the compulsory nature of music. When we need to get a point across and simple words won’t suffice, but we can’t move forward without expressing that feeling, music can bring us to that point. It becomes our necessary outlet for self-expression.
A couple hundred years before we had Plato, we had Confucius. Ancient China took a long time to reach the state of the perfected empire it had for so many dynasties. Confucius emphasized the importance of ethics, family loyalty, social harmony, and moral education. His teachings, which his students put together into a book called The Analects, are the founding principles of Confucianism. This is a system of thought that values respect for tradition, the cultivation of virtue, and the role of music and ritual in personal and societal well-being. For the last two and a half thousand years, Confucian teachings have been guiding decisions all over the world.
Confucius suggests that the pleasure provided by music is not optional– it’s essential. It’s woven into the very fabric of our being. Confucius took spirituality very seriously, so making the claim that something is so deeply connected to our soul is huge. Music, for Confucius, is inherently attached to humanity as an entity, and they are inseparable.
Pretty much anybody who was cool enough to be blacklisted from Hollywood by Joseph McCarthy is a winner in my book. E.Y. “Yip” Harburg made a name for himself as a lyricist whose causal protest music and comedic wordplay earned him a spot among some of the most celebrated lyricists of the last century. Most notably, Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics for The Wizard of Oz movie soundtrack.
Harburg was famous for his championing of forward-thinking ideals. His goal was to tear down the status quo and promote equality. This quote reminds us that music is a perfect way of doing that. Songs can invoke any emotion, and Harburg understood how to use music to make people happy and active.
These are just a few quotes from famous figures that show just how amazing music can really be. Music molds us, it heals us, and it lets us express ourselves. There are so many unique ways music can make us feel better, and so many ways we can take advantage of these in music therapy.
