This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

I can't live one day without hearing music, playing it , studying it , or thinking about it .

The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm

When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost.

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.

What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul.