Leonard Bernstein

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“Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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“I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.”

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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“Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.”

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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“We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good

We'll do the best we know.

We'll build our house and chop our wood

And make our garden grow.

And make our garden grow!”

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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“The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed... because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may affect the course of events... by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.”

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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"It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams."

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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"Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great."

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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"The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial."

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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"I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change."

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

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"Wine snobbery, of course, is part showmanship, part sophistication, part knowledge, and part bluff"

― Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)