No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist's consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress.

Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.

Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical. Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor. Why, Italian Futurists, have you slavishly reproduced only what is commonplace and boring in the bustle of our daily lives. I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.

In every domain of art, a work that corresponds to the need of its day carries a message of social and cultural value. It is the artist who crystallizes his age ... who fixes his time in history.

I don't want to write any more for the old Man-power instruments and am handicapped by the lack of adequate electrical instruments for which I now conceive my music.

Music is the most abstract of the arts and also the most physical....music is under two signs, the stars and the wine

Of all the arts, music is the one communal art. It requires for its existence extensive cooperation and organization...Singing together the greatest choral music of all time is the surest way of developing in a community that sense of quality and reverence for beauty, which is the basis of a musical culture...Entertainment has its place in life just as candies and cocktails have, but health is not built on such a diet alone, nor culture exclusively on amusement.