Quotes by Conductors - Page 3

Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
Leonard Bernstein
The history of human nature: How far can we get away with being complete and utter bastards, before we have to backtrack?
Paul MacAlindin
...how absurd human beings are and how magnificent.
Benjamin Zander
Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Leonard Bernstein
Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart..
Pablo Casals
Achieving your goal is greatExceeding your goal is exceptionalExceeding your goal and teaching others is Leadership
Joseph Swenson
Always remember rule #6... don't take yourself so damn seriously
Ben and Rosamund Zander
I have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite — matter that can lend itself to my operation only insofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities. And such matter presents itself to me together with limitations. I must in turn impose mine upon it. So here we are, whether we like it or not, in the realm of necessity. And yet which of us has ever heard talk of art as other than a realm of freedom? This sort of heresy is uniformly widespread because it is imagined that art is outside the bounds of ordinary activity. Well, in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation: whatever constantly gives way to pressure, constantly renders movement impossible. My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.
Igor Stravinsky
There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.
Albert Dietrich
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ...
Louis Hector Berlioz
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its stud
Hector Berlioz
In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold.
Benjamin Zander
Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can, there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.
Sarah Caldwell
Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization.
Yehudi Menuhin
My idea of success has little to do with fame. I just wanted to know if I could play with the best musicians in the business.
Artie Kane
When Marconi suggested the possibility of wireless transmission of sound (the radio),he was committed to a mental institution. But people like Lincoln, Edison, and Marconi were strongly motivated. So they didn't give up. They somehow knew that the only real failure is the one from which we learn nothing. They seemed to go on the assumption that there is no failure greater than the failure of not trying, and so they continued to try in the face of repeated failures.
John Powell
The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed... because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may affect the course of events... by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.
Leonard Bernstein
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."]
Hector Berlioz
Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world... We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away.
John Powell
I thought about the difference between a mama's girl and a daddy's girl. I decided that a daughter who belongs to her daddy expects gifts, while a daughter who belongs to her mama expects a lot more. Not from her mama. From herself.
Victoria Bond
Many's the man/ who thought himself wise/ but what he needed/ he did not know...
Richard Wagner
Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, orperhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn't know. But I amsure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
Aaron Copland
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
Leonard Bernstein
Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.
Michel Legrand