Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.

What force is more potent than love?

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God.

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?

The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

I am an inventor of music.

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed and as we are already flying pilotless on instrument controls it is even too late to ask where we are going.

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.

A good composer does not imitate he steals.

The real composer thinks about his work the whole time he is not always conscious of this but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.

A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

I am neither a child, a young man, nor an ancient; nor am I of any caste.

I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is not in their power to help themselves.

I always looked for a man to rescue me and bring me happiness. I bought into that myth, of course, and looked for my own Prince Charming.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

A man must be strong in that profession, he must have vigor of body and mind, yet I am all out of breath if I walk up a hill; I have not the heart to crush even a fly.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

I believe that if a man does a job as well as a woman, he should be paid as much.