The language of tones belongs equally to all mankind, and melody is the absolute language in which the musician speaks to every heart.

The essence of higher instrumental music lays herein that one is able to express in tones that what one is unable to say in words.

What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music.

I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts - the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products.

Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing private spending equivalently.

I write music with an exclamation point!

One siupreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy and imagination that ceates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality.