No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful. If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC. Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn’t be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out. That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today’s war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.

Was music once a proof of God’s existence? As long as it admits things beyond measure, That supposition stands.

Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns,
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns!
No lengthen’d scroll, no praise-encumber’d stone;
My epitaph shall be my name alone:

What epitaph, I wonder, would a poet write for him?

...the sole test of music is its power to exalt the soul.

Schopenhauer says somewhere that if the entire universe should vanish the only thing left would be music.

All's well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.

Without music, life would be a mistake.. I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.

The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.

"I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says, "Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest." I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have."

When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like." I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it.

The only thing that can kill me is death, that's the only thing that can ever stop me, is death, and even then my music will live forever.

The only truth is music.

At the end of the day, when you look back, no matter what you are, who you are and what you do, you'll always go back to the basics or the undeniable. History is the best judge; when your epitaph is written you're just a day or a week old six feet under. Stick with the basics, stick to what you're sure of, and stick to something that cannot be judged as being either false, ambitious or arrogant.