Leonard Bernstein Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  Time, Stress, Humor

  76 Copy quote
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  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.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Dream, Artist, World

  Leonard Bernstein (1982). “Findings”, Anchor

  58 Copy quote
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  A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Art, Essentials, Doe

  Leonard Bernstein (2007). “The Infinite Variety of Music”, p.141, Amadeus Press

  52 Copy quote
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  Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Music, Communication, Talking

  Leonard Bernstein (1976). “The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard”, p.140, Harvard University Press

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  Music, Peace, Ubuntu

  Leonard Bernstein (1982). “Findings”, Anchor

  71 Copy quote

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  Life Is, Academic, Music Is

  34 Copy quote

• Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Prayer, Names, Ideas

  73 Copy quote

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  World, Critics, Statues

  49 Copy quote

• Children must receive music instruction as naturally as food, with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game, and this must happen from the beginning of their lives.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Children, Games, Balls

  Leonard Bernstein (1982). “Findings”, Anchor

  45 Copy quote

• The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Artist, Keys, Giving

  66 Copy quote

• Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Names, Reaching, Metaphorical

  Leonard Bernstein (1976). “The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard”, p.140, Harvard University Press

  26 Copy quote

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  Change, Believe, Men

  Leonard Bernstein (1982). “Findings”, Anchor

  22 Copy quote

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  Thinking, One Day, Hearing

  Leonard Bernstein (2007). “The Infinite Variety of Music”, p.10, Amadeus Press

  46 Copy quote

• 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

  Leonard Bernstein

  Music, Spiritual, Art

  41 Copy quote

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  Music, Art, Stars

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Believe, Fighting, People

  12 Copy quote

• Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Motivational, Success, Time

  17 Copy quote

• You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. It doesn't matter what. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Writing, Imagination, Creative

  35 Copy quote

• The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Play, Orchestra, Instruments

  27 Copy quote

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  People, Making Love, Conducting

  9 Copy quote

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

  Leonard Bernstein

  Play, Enthusiasm, Firsts

  53 Copy quote

• To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Gay, Broadway, Composer

  40 Copy quote

• The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us, all of you, are endowed with the powers of fantasy.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Mean, Artist, Imagination

  Leonard Bernstein (1982). “Findings”, Anchor

  29 Copy quote

• I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Answers, Knows

  "The Unanswered Question" by David Cairns, www.nytimes.com. May 23, 1976.

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Men, Risk, Mind

  19 Copy quote

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