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Igor Stravinsky

10 quotes

A name that surfaces again and again in collections of great quotes, Igor Stravinsky clearly understood the power of language. With equal ease, Igor Stravinsky moved between Music and Wisdom, finding connections others missed. Our collection holds 15 quotes from Igor Stravinsky, each offering a different angle on Music, Wisdom, Truth, Romantic, and Respect. A line that stays with you: "Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?"

“The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Music

All Quotes by Igor Stravinsky

“A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Family

“Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor we do not remember him in it.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Romantic

“Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Relationship

“The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Music

“Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?”

— Igor Stravinsky

Alone

“I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Truth

“I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Knowledge

“I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Life

“The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Music

“Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.”

— Igor Stravinsky

Art