Literary Birthday – 25 August – Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein was born 25 August 1918 and died 14 October 1990.

Quotes

1. To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
2. 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.
3. I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic.
4. Any great art work … revives and re-adapts 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.
5. 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.
6. 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 was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He is the author of The Joy of Music.

Source for image