Last Updated on May 12, 2019 by Klaus Crow

I love gathering quotes of wise, smart, successful, creative and musical human beings. They always inspire me to get more out of myself, to think differently, grow and expand my horizon, or sometimes remind myself of the obvious.

Today I will share with you 20 beautiful quotes that will take you back to the drawing table and motivate you to practice diligently to realize your true potential. After all, practice is the vehicle that will lead you to your desired outcome.

Tip: Read all the quotes carefully. Take two or three quotes, write them down and hang them up on your wall, set it as a background on your computer or iPhone. Make sure you see these quotes everyday to remind yourself of the importance, joy and rewards of practice.

Read, ponder and act!

1 – “The only thing that’s holding you back, is the way you’re thinking.” ~ Steve Vai

2 – “You’re not born with certain skills, you have to acquire them” ~ Ry Cooder

3 – Copying one person is stealing. Copying ten is research.” ~ Chet Atkins

4 – The best way for a student to get out of difficulty is to go through it ~ Aristotle

5 – “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.” ~ Louis Armstrong

6 – “The most crucial ingredient by far for success in music is . . .what happens in the practice room.” ~ William Westney

7 – “There’ll come a writing phase where you have to defend the time, unplug the phone and put in the hours to get it done.” ~ James Taylor

8 – “If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better.” ~ Lindsay Buckingham

9 – “The more you play music, the better you’ll get” ~ Glen Campbell

10 – “I kept listening, kept going to see people, kept sitting in with people, kept listening to records. If I wanted to learn somebody’s stuff, like with Clapton, when I wanted to learn how he was getting some of his sounds.” ~ Stevie Ray Vaughan

11 – Most beginners want to learn lead because they think it’s cool, consequently they never really develop good rhythm skills, since most of a rock guitarists time is spent playing rhythm, it’s important to learn to do it well .. learning lead should come after you can play solid backup and have the sound of the chords in your head” ~ Eddie van Halen

12 – “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” ~ Aristotle

13 – “You get out of life what you put into it … simple.” ~ Tommy Emmanuel

14 – “Forget about every other lesson in the book. You have to be able to tap your foot or else none of what you doing you are not gonna have any control of your symptom.” ~ Al Di Meola

15 – “It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.” ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

16 – “If you want to play something that you can’t, you need to see and hear yourself doing it in your minds eye. It will start to happen” ~ Steve Vai

17 – Although I’m a lead guitarist, I’d say that a good 95 percent of my time onstage is spent playing rhythm. ~ Kirk Hammet

18 – “Relax. Be yourself. Play a lot.” ~ Joe Satriani

19 – That old funny-shaped bit of wood is still staring me in the face every day saying ‘come on, you haven’t started yet!’ It’s infinite. ~ Jeff Beck

20 – “Never give up on a good thing, never give up, never give up!” ~ George Benson