Sixty Sun Ra Quotes
Below 60 quotes from composer, bandleader, philosopher, and Afrofuturist pioneer Sun Ra, reflecting his thoughts on music, cosmic myth, reality, and humanity:
"The possible has been tried and failed. Now it's time to try the impossible.
"I do not come to you as a reality, I come to you as the myth because that is what black people are: myths. I came from a dream that the black man dreamed long ago."
"The real aim of music is to co-ordinate the minds of the people into an intelligent reach for a better world and an intelligent approach to the living future."
"The light of the future casts the shadows of tomorrow."
"Music is a plane of wisdom, because music is a universal language... a gift of the Airy Kingdom, music is air, a universal existence common to all the living"
"I think of myself as a complete mystery. To myself."
"The earth cannot move without music. The earth moves in a certain rhythm, a certain sound, a certain note. When the music stops the earth will stop and everything upon it will die."
"Where human eyes have never seen, where human beings have never been, I build a world of abstract dreams, and I wait for you."
"Art does not begin with imitation, but with discipline."
"I never wanted to be a part of planet Earth, but I am compelled to be here, so anything I do for this planet is because the Master-Creator of the Universe is making me do it. I am of another dimension."
"History is His story. You haven't heard my story."
"Music is not material. Music is Spiritual."
"Heaven is where you'll be when you are okay right where you are."
"Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Music."
"If you're not mad at the world, you don't have what it takes."
"What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth."
"The planet is asleep and it's the fault of musicians who are untrue to themselves."
"I'm not a prophet. I'm a destiny-changer. It's all right to prophesy, but the best thing to do is change things, if you've got the power."
"Those who will not dance will have to be shot."
"It takes a motion to notion and it takes a notion to motion."
"I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos."
"A race needs clowns. In earlier days people knew that... You could call me the jester of the Creator."
"I'm not into division. I'm into coordination, discipline and tradition."
"Every desire is an end and every end is a desire. Then the end of the world is a desire of the world. What type of end do you desire?" "The past is DEAD and those who are following the past are doomed to die and be like the past."
"I am not a fantasy in a real sense. I am a fantasy in a false sense. Yet I exist. There are no shadows where I am, because I am the fire of the lightning and the flame of the sun."
"Space is not only high, it's low. It's a bottomless pit."
"The trouble with the people on this planet is they refuse to think, they refuse to believe anything except what they know."
"People have a lot more of the unknown than the known in their minds. The unknown is great; it's like the darkness. Nobody made that. It just happens. Light and all that—someone made that... But nobody made the darkness. My music is about dark tradition."
"I have approached a degree of love that is so unwise in one world that it is wisdom in another... Love is greater than hate, and I have chosen love above all else in the world."
"Proper evaluations of words and letters in their phonetic and associated sense can bring the people of earth to the clear light of pure cosmic wisdom."
"At first there was nothing, then nothing turned itself inside-out and became something."
"If death is the absence of life, then death's death is life."
"Music can be the bridge to understanding, but people have to get some knowledge."
"Well, actually, I'm a psychic being, and you know, we don't concern ourselves with being born; we concern ourselves with being eternal; we deal with the spirit."
"I left my family, I left my friends. I left them for real. I left everything to be me, 'cause I knew I was not like them. Not like black or white, not like Americans. I'm not like nobody else. I'm alone on this planet."
"The outer space beings are my brothers. They sent me here. They already know my music."
"Play some fire on it."
"In the world of tomorrow, the new man will 'think' the place he wants to go, then his mind will take him there."
"It will be necessary that people from space and Earthlings teach each other, or else it will be general destruction for us all."
"I always say it's not my Arkestra, it belongs to some other force which wants certain things, to reach people."
"The world is in such a bad condition that if they don't find what you call a redeemer, every man, woman and child on this planet will be eliminated."
"A race without a sense of humor is in bad shape."
"When the person Myth meets the person Reality, the spirit of the impossible-strange appears in dark disguise."
"I use music as a medium to talk to people."
"I see them as they are to is. And not the seeming isness of the was."
"Whatever is the imperative need."
"The future is never. Never comes tomorrow. Never is not."
"Behold the pre-prophetic symbols of the planes of Never. Behold, behold this thisness! This isness."
"In some far off place, many light years in space, I'll wait for you. Where human feet have never trod, where human eyes have never seen, I'll build a world of abstract dreams and wait for you."
For Sun Ra, "myth" was not a falsehood or a fairy tale—it was a dynamic force, a tool for liberation, and a realm of potential higher than Earth's rigid "reality."
Here are 10 quotes where Sun Ra explicitly engages with the concept of myth and mythology:
"I do not come to you as a reality, I come to you as the myth because that is what black people are: myths. I came from a dream that the black man dreamed long ago."
"If you are not a myth, whose reality are you? If you are not a reality, whose myth are you?"
"When the person Myth meets the person Reality, the spirit of the impossible-strange appears in dark disguise."
"We hold this myth to be potential. Not self-evident, but equational. Another dimension of another kind of living life."
"Mythology is the language of the cosmos."
"Myth is not a lie. Myth is a potentiality. Myth is a possibility."
"So we are both myths... You don't exist in this society. If you did, your people wouldn't be seeking equal rights."
"Myth speaks of the future. Reality speaks of the present, which is already past."
"My myth is my reality. Your reality is your myth."
"Mythology is the truth that has not yet happened."
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