Quotes from Brian Eno

I'm actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

When we go out to the country and just sit there, what we're really doing is just switching off various kinds of alertness that we don't have to use. When we do that, we are stopping being defensive. We are no longer shutting ourselves off from different types of experiences, we are welcoming them in.

The reason I don't tour is that I don't know how to front a band. What would I do? I can't really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.

A big ego means that you have some confidence in your abilities, really, and that you're prepared to take the risk of trying them out.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene.

I think there's a lot of similarity between what people try to do with religion with what they want from art. In fact, I very specifically think that they are same thing. Not that religion and art are the same, but that they both tap into the same need we have for surrender.

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.

I think everyone's inherently snobbish. Things that are very popular are not taken seriously, because the snobbish side of one says, 'Well, if everyone likes it it can't be that good.' Whereas if only I and a couple of other people like it, then it must be really something special.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing - 'Oh, let's put that sentence there, let's get rid of this' - have become commonplace in films and music too.

I often say to people that producing is the best-paid form of cowardice. When you produce things, you almost always get credit if it's a good record, but you hardly ever get the blame if it's not! You don't really take responsibility for your work.

It's actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

I've discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that's already there.

In England and Europe, we have this huge music called ambient - ambient techno, ambient house, ambient hip-hop, ambient this, ambient that.

I'm always interested in what you can do with technology that people haven't thought of doing yet.

It's insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.

I don't live in the past at all; I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

I've got nothing against records - I've spent my life making them - but they are a kind of historical blip.