It is nothing to succeed if one has not taken great trouble, and it is nothing to fail if one has done the best one could.

To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.

The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.

Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth.

Without discipline, there can be no freedom.

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.

False notes can be forgiven, false music cannot.

A poor white woman from the South is different than a poor black woman from the South, and has a completely different experience.

In history-as-politics, the 'future' is that vacuum in time waiting to be filled with the antics of statesmen.

The wonderful living Word of God is more precious than anything else that we have.

He was the mightiest of Puritans no less than of philistines who first insisted that beauty is only skin deep.

Neuroligacally, human beings haven't caught up with today's overstimulating environment. Getting kids out in nature can make a difference.

Oh, did you expect me to play fair?" Cupid laughed. "I am the god of love. I am never fair.

I think pulling off, pulling off a kind of fake documentary of me being a, you know, actual dictator would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible.

We are prone to see what lies behind our eyes, rather than what apprears before them.

Negative people need drama like oxygen. Stay positive, it'll take their breath away.

Prior to 1940, the affluent and the middle class began to converge, but after 1979, the economic gap between the middle class and affluent widened significantly.