I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.

I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological and scientific progress, or that spirit will die. It is incumbent on our educators to remember this; and music is at the top of the spiritual must list. When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost. But as long as we insist on maintaining artistic vitality, we are able to hope in man

Conducting is like making love to a hundred people at the same time.

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

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

It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.

Life without music is meaningless, music without life is academic.