You can't expect someone born into a family with no music...to understand when I'm conducting the Schönberg Variations.

Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.

And in English you have this wonderful difference between listening and hearing, and that you can hear without listening, and you can listen and not hear.

Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence.

Every great work of art has two faces, one towards its own time and one towards future, towards eternity.

The Germans are prisoners of their past.

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.