[On being asked how it felt to be the first female conductor of the Boston Symphony:] I've been a woman for a little more than fifty years, and I've gotten over my original astonishment.

The Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document; it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age.

Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth.

It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits of our sorrowful life, it has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the pettinesses that diminish us, bringing us back pure and new to what was, what will be, what music has created for us.

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

Without order there can be no inner satisfaction. Without inner satisfaction there can be no freedom. Without freedom there is no joy.