Violinist

🇺🇸Chris Murphy

Politics

b. 1973

"When the U.S. is an active participant in a foreign war, what comes with that is an increased responsibility to try to rescue civilians from the harm done in part by U.S. munitions and U.S. targeting."

🇳🇴Alexander Rybak

Music

b. 1986

"Your boyfriends might be angry, my girlfriends might be blue. But no one can deny it, from now on I love you."

"Charles Kenny, Center For Global Development"

🇬🇧Yehudi Menuhin

Music

1916–1999

"One should feel in the right arm the vibration of the bow hair on the strings. The moment tension or hardness enters into the hand then of course the vibrations will not be felt- they cannot penetrate."

🇬🇧Lionel Tertis

Education

1876–1975

"from a tremendously vital white-hot fortissimo down to a trembling, limpid pianissimo so distant that it was difficult to sense whence the mysterious sound could be coming"

🇺🇸Lorin Maazel

Music

1930–2014

"I don't want to be conducting Mahler with my head stuffed full of 10 million notes from other composers."

🇺🇸Marlene Dietrich

Entertainment

1901–1992

"Jungs! Opfert euch nicht! Der krieg ist doch scheiße, Hitler ist ein idiot! Translation: Boy! Do not sacrifice yourself! The war is but shit, Hitler is an idiot!"

🇺🇸Jack Benny

Music

1894–1974

"Clyde: I knew as soon as we got off the freeway, we'd run into trouble."

🇩🇪Johann Sebastian Bach

Music

Baroque music

1685–1750

"I have this to say about Bach's works: Listen, play, love, revere — and keep your trap shut."

🇺🇸Henny Youngman

Music

1906–1998

"My wife is on a new diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn't lost weight, but can she climb a tree."

🇺🇸Louis Farrakhan

Music

b. 1933

"The Jews talk about "never again."… You cannot say "Never again" to God because when he puts you in the oven, you're in one indeed!… "Never again" don't mean a damn thing when God get ready for you!"

🇬🇧George Frideric Handel

Music

Baroque music

1685–1759

"You have taken far too much trouble over your opera. Here in England that is mere waste of time. What the English like is something that they can beat time to, something that hits them straight on the drum of the ear."

Antonín Dvořák

Music

Romantic music

1841–1904

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly that art, as such, does not "pay," to use an American expression – at least, not in the beginning – and that the art that has to pay its own way is apt to become vitiated and cheap."

🇺🇸Loretta Lynn

Music

1932–2022

"I never knew where babies came from until it happened to me."

🇬🇧John Holloway (sociologist)

Philosophy

b. 1948

"Capital acquires a dynamic of its own and the leading members of society are quite simply its most loyal servants, its most servile courtiers."

Katie Melua

Music

b. 1984

"makes music that's easy on the ear and even easier on the brain. She's the perfect good girl in the middle of the road. I'm not keen to make things too easy for anyone."

🇺🇸Sammy Cahn

Music

1913–1993

"Till you're walking beside me, I'll walk alone."

🇺🇸Laurie Anderson

Art

feminist art

b. 1947

"And he said: Now, I'm the Soul Doctor, and you know, language is a virus from outer space, and hearing your name is better than seeing your face."

🇺🇸Sarah Chang

Music

b. 1980

"I try not to take my life for granted. I have friends who have tendinitis. That would kill me. A short break from the violin is fine, but if I don't touch it for three or four days, my fingers start to feel funny."

🇺🇸Jascha Heifetz

Music

1901–1987

"He once told a reporter he wanted his obituary to be short - "just make it born in Russia, first lesson at 3, debut at 7, debut in America in 1917."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Music

Classical period

1756–1791

"Lengthy immersion in the works of other composers can tire. The music of Mozart does not tire, and this is one of its miracles."

🇺🇸Emilie Autumn

Music

b. 1979

"I am my heart’s undertaker. Daily I go and retrieve its tattered remains, place them delicately into its little coffin, and bury it in the depths of my memory, only to have to do it all again tomorrow."