Top 35 Dave Matthews Quotes

We give the podium to a lot of people who shouldn’t have the podium. The message that’s delivered the loudest and in the most entertaining way is the one that we’re going to put on because that’s what we want. We want ratings more than we want to deliver information. That’s just where the culture’s gotten.

I definitely like the oddballs. There’s a song called ‘Little Thing,’ which is the only song that I have recorded that has no words. And it’s the one that I get past my critic inside me.

When I look at how fortunate I’ve been, being a musician… my response to being overpaid is that I should pay it back to my community in some way.

I find a therapy in playing music, in many different ways.

I think we should all talk to our enemies and talk to our friends. Talk! That’s the only way we’ll find solutions.

The world and the universe are far more wonderful if there’s not a puppet master.

The idea that we’re somehow centrally important to the planet’s existence is pretty comical – although I’d like us to be.

I want to figure out a way to not be stupid with money, then make a whole bunch of it, then I want to move to Outer Mongolia. I want to milk a yak. Maybe I’ll just settle for a cow.

I can’t believe that we would lie in our graves wondering if we had spent our living days well. I can’t believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been.

My songs are like a three-legged dog – you have to get to know them to have any love for them.

I’m a bit of a caveman – I don’t go out into the digital space very often. I lie facedown on the grass and count how many bugs I can find.

I think I’m probably a very sad man wrapped in a very joyful package, and I think I’m very resilient, and I think I’m quite generous, sometimes to a fault. And I’m very bad with money, but I don’t see that too much of a flaw.

I use God in my songs a lot but I don’t have a relationship. I don’t know what that means.

It’s funny, I get a little quieter with time. I don’t want to chase my tail and one day repeat myself and repeat myself and one day have kids going to college and not have memories that I should, because I was too busy doing my thing.

I’m a very vicious critic of myself.

A friend is always good to have, but a lover’s kiss is better than angels raining down on me.

There’s a freedom to being young that is harder to come by as time goes on.

I’ve always been obsessed by visual art as I have been by music personally, but that doesn’t mean anything professionally.

Success turns a lot of people off. I have a pretty solid sense of joy and respect that irritates people, and can irritate me, too.

I’ve never been much of a craftsman, in an educated way. But I think just the experience of writing makes the avenues I follow a little more efficient in some ways. At the same time, when you’re young, you’re a little more fearless, and there’s less of an internal critic.

I don’t believe in trickle-down economics. I don’t think that people who have the most are inclined to share it, generally.

We look to our leaders once we elect them to either lead us in the right direction or at least not crush us.

When I write the set, I try to create something that will not only be interesting for the audience, but will have a flow for the band, too, so we don’t get boring.

I don’t think everything is going to get peachy ever. But I think we have to fight for what we believe in.

Being able to scream at the top of my lungs in front of people is very therapeutic. It is a great gift for me to be able to do that.

There’s war – there’s always been war, as long as most of us have been alive. There have always been people being abused, there’s always been horrible things in the world. Why are we outraged? We should just be quiet and figure it out, and work it out together.

A guy and a girl can be just friends, but at one point or another, they will fall for each other… maybe temporarily, maybe at the wrong time, maybe too late, or maybe forever.

The saddest part of the human race is we’re obsessed with this idea of ‘us and them,’ which is really a no-win situation, whether it’s racial, cultural, religious or political.

Tomorrow is no place to place your better days.

I’m familiar with that feeling of silence that comes with a very imminent catastrophe, when you know you have absolutely no control over a situation.

I’m from a very politically and socially conscious family. My mother always made a point of making us look at what was going on around us and take stock of our part in it.

I was regularly advised not to go into music, that I should give up that foolish dream.

I do still get shocked every once in a while when I catch my reflection when I’m walking past a glass building, but it’s in my mind about getting older and finding out what I’m going to look like as it unfolds – or as it folds, depending on where the marks and scars land.

South Africa gives me a perspective of what’s real and what’s not real. So I go back to South Africa to both lose myself and gain awareness of myself. Every time I go back, it doesn’t take long for me to get caught into a very different thing. A very different sense of myself.

You wear nothing but you wear it so well.