Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.

I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.

You must work - we must all work to make the world worthy of its children.

We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree.

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

To retire is to begin to die.

The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.

Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.

Music will save the world.

I am perhaps the oldest musician in the world. I am an old man but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life, and to say things to the world that are true.

The first thing to do in life is to do with purpose what one purposes to do.

To retire is to die.

The heart of the melody can never be put down on paper.