Leonard Bernstein

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.

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.

Any great work of art 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.

By dokonać rzeczy wielkich, potrzeba dwóch rzeczy: planu i nie do końca dość czasu.

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