Famous Leonard Bernstein Quotations

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"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."
by Leonard Bernstein
"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 Leonard Bernstein
"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 Leonard Bernstein
"I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer."
by Leonard Bernstein
"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long."
by Leonard Bernstein
"It was an initiation into the love of learning, of learning how to learn, that was revealed to me by my BLS masters as a matter of interdisciplinary cognition-that is, learning to know something by its relation to something else."
by Leonard Bernstein
"Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."
by Leonard Bernstein
"Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."
by Leonard Bernstein
"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."
by Leonard Bernstein
"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time"
by Leonard Bernstein
"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."
by Leonard Bernstein
"Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable."
by Leonard Bernstein
"Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors."
by Leonard Bernstein
"The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm"
by Leonard Bernstein


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