Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

Wine snobbery, of course, is part showmanship, part sophistication, part knowledge, and part bluff

I believe in people. I feel, love, need and respect people above all else, including natural scenery, organized piety and nationalistic superstructures. One human figure on the slope of a mountain can make the mountain disappear for me, one person fighting for truth can disqualify for me the entire system which had dispensed it.

Success is all very well as long as you don't inhale.

Children must receive music instruction as naturally as food, with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game, and this must happen from the beginning of their lives.

This must be the mission of every man of goodwill: to insist, unflaggingly, at risk of becoming a repetitive bore, but to insist on the achievement of a world in which the mind will have triumphed over violence.