The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? 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. In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing. 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. The heart of the melody can never be put down on paper. The art of interpretation is not to play what is written. Let us not forget that the greatest composers where also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere. Beauty is all about us, but how may are blind! They look at the wonder of this earth and seem to see nothing. People move hectically but give little thought to where they are going. They seek excitement ... as if they were lost and desperate. Bach is the supreme genius of music... This man, who knows everything and feels everything, cannot write one note, however unimportant it may appear, which is anything but transcendent. He has reached the heart of every noble thought, and has done it in the most perfect way. 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. |