Good music is very close to primitive language.
Interpretation
Music expresses emotions and thoughts akin to how language conveys meaning.
Denis Diderot highlights the deep connection between music and language, suggesting that music communicates feelings and ideas in a fundamental, instinctive way that predates complex verbal communication. This perspective emphasizes the universal nature of music as a form of expression that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers, tapping into the primal aspects of human experience.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about the impact of music in cultural identity.
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
This root [the potato], no matter how much you prepare it, is tasteless and floury. It cannot pass for an agreeable food, but it supplies a food sufficiently abundant and sufficiently healthy for men who ask only to sustain themselves. The potato is criticized with reason for being windy, but what matters windiness for the vigorous organisms of peasants and laborers?
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
In order to get as much fame as one's father one has to much more able than he.
All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.
I intend to be making films until I'm an old lady. So, if God willing I get there, I need to create a paradigm for myself where I can make it regardless of whether or not they still like what I'm making.
The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.
In art, as in science, reductionism does not trivialize our perception - of color, light, and perspective - but allows us to see each of these components in a new way.
Music is a defining element of character.
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
Hairdressers are a wonderful breed. You work one-on-one with another human being and the object is to make them feel so much better and to look at themselves with a twinkle in their eye.
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