I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change.

From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining.

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.

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.

When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

Life without music is unthinkable.

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