In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.

I always imagined that to bring an orchestra to play together is not enough for a conductor.

Since the composer has said everything, if you discover everything, it will be enough and you will be a happy man. Don't try to say it's your taste, and because of that you are changing this or that. And I must say this respect is still there.

I wouldn't say I've changed my mind. I changed some of my natural habits, some of my natural character.

And to understand this, I think this is a most important point where I would like always to be understood what we do with the New York Philharmonic. That the meaning of the music is number one.

The message of music was also the first thing what I learned from my first teacher. She was an organist too and she was very devoted to what she played, so she had a respect for every piece and she felt that she is not allowed to add something of her own.

I believe so, but at first he must know. He must know in which spirit Beethoven has composed this piece. He must try to study that. And he must find out in which station of life of Beethoven he did.

I was different from most young conductors today.

If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that.

Young conductors who are confident enough, they very often have success.

You know as I started as a shy young conductor, I always wanted to cooperate. To build up the musicians. To help them to be better than without a conductor. And sometimes young talented musicians have to be encouraged.

And if you are strong enough, then you can grow as a conductor more and more.

I can go in front of an orchestra. I can go in front of an audience. But if you see me walking through an audience in the reception or through a lot of people, I'm still shy.

In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding.

At the age of 16, something happened with my finger and the doctor told me, you never can be a organist or pianist, so think about what you do with music.

You have to change your mind with every orchestra because every orchestra has a different character.

Even my family laughed at me because they thought this young guy who's always stuttering in front of other people should be in front of 100 musicians and talk to them and leading them.

And I always tried to be not a star. To be someone who people like to talk to.

What I never overcame is a kind of shyness.

An orchestra full of stars can be a disaster.

Even I had no opportunity to conduct very many concerts after World War II.

And at the same time, I had my very first concert at the age of 16. I hadn't heard a symphony orchestra before, and I was so deeply impressed I said I have to be a conductor.

I worked on scores. I went to the musical library in Berlin which is very famous. I discovered that we had scores of Beethoven, printed scores of Beethoven, that are full of mistakes. Not the wrong or false notes, but the wrong dynamic, understandable things.

As I came to New York, it was for me a new beginning. To discover what people are living here. What do they need, what do they expect, what would they like to be the image and the performance of the New York Philharmonic?

Very often, if I know the orchestra doesn't know a piece or it's a new piece, I have main ideas about it. But then we start to play and I never talk about places where they played so beautiful and so clear in the beginning that there is nothing to say.

Sometimes if you have very confident people, you have to tell them please, be polite, there are other players are good enough as you and you should never speak out of an orchestra.

An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.

My focus is that firearms are handled safely and that we can continue to enjoy them here in North America.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

Who cares about that stuff? This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

I'm about to become a member of the Chemists Society of America. I'm very proud of that.

It's a cyclical thing. When they make one, everyone loves them. Different genres come around in succession. People always welcome the western. It's America's genre.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

If we can just take a few companies, and use those as models, as examples, to show the rest of corporate America how they can become more competitive, that's what I'd like to do and that's what I hope to do.

The surest way to return to the people's business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.

Gary Smith, when I came to America, taught me a great deal about racing.

You know, nobody eats in England. Three or four pints of English beer a night fills you. I can't say I'm very impressed with the food in America. it's all sort of bland. Like turkey sandwiches.

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

I've always thought that if Israel really wanted to solve the problem, they'd just start tomorrow and push right to the Jordan River, and anything in their way goes. They don't need America or someone else to help.

These old ballparks are like cathedrals in America. We don't have big old Gothic cathedrals like they do in Europe. But we got baseball parks.

American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

From the long range point of view, I do not know of anything we can do more important than to make some contribution to the preservation of religion as a vital force in America.

Our alliances and our credibility are crucial elements of our working capital in advancing America's interests in the world, and they have been eroded over the last four years.

In America it's live by the sword of freedom of expression and be will to die by it as well.

America is not a melting pot. It is a sizzling cauldron.