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.
—Leonard Bernstein
Topics: Liberalism
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time
—Leonard Bernstein
Topics: Inspirational
I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic.
—Leonard Bernstein
Einstein said that “the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.” So why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus depriving it of its mystery?
—Leonard Bernstein
Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.
—Leonard Bernstein
Topics: Talent
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
Topics: Music
When the thunder rumbles,
Now the age of gold is dead.
When the dreams we’ve clung to
Trying to stay young,
Have left us parched and old instead.
When my courage crumbles,
When I feel confused and frail,
When my spirit falters on decaying altars
And my illusions fail—
I go on right then.
I go on again.
I go on to say I will celebrate another day.
I go on.
If tomorrow tumbles
And everything I love is gone,
I will face regret all my days, and yet
I will still go on.
—Leonard Bernstein
Topics: Determination
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
Topics: Music
The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm
—Leonard Bernstein
Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.
—Leonard Bernstein
Topics: One liners, Music, Communication
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
—Leonard Bernstein
Topics: Achievement
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.
—Leonard Bernstein
Presenting the cork is wine nonsense, a ritual invented by captains and sommeliers. The wine snob does not resent ritual. There is infinite ritual in the etiquette of serving wine. But most of it at least hints at style or purpose. Placing an unsightly cork on the tablecloth hints at absurdity.
—Leonard Bernstein
Topics: Wine
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Aaron Copland American Composer
- Arthur Rubinstein American Pianist
- George Gershwin American Composer
- John Cage American Composer
- Duke Ellington American Musician
- Fred Astaire American Dancer, Singer
- Vladimir Horowitz Russian-born American Pianist
- Stephen Sondheim American Musician
- Igor Stravinsky Russian-born American Composer
- Charles Mingus American Jazz Bassist, Composer
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