Quotes by Daniel Barenboim

“Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead.”

“We need to take music out of the ivory tower - both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.”

“It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear a...”

“To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.”

“Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will ha...”

“I believe in the understanding of difficult situations, difficult music, or any kind of difficulties, through familiarity. Familiarity, in this case, does not breed contempt, but breeds understanding.”

“I must tell you, that when I came back from Ramallah in September, I really felt I had done something good. For many of these Palestinian children, it was the first time they ever had a positive th...”

“The Declaration of Independence was a source of inspiration to believe in ideals that transformed us from Jews to Israelis. ... I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achieveme...”

“Despite the fact that as an art, music cannot compromise its principles, and politics, on the other hand, is the art of compromise, when politics transcends the limits of the present existence and ...”

“I am a Palestinian ..… and an Israeli … So you see it is possible to be both. … Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause therefore it can be only given justice if it is...”

“Every musician here has played these pieces many times, sometimes hundreds of times. Yesterday we looked at this music as if we had seen it for the first time. We never accept that the next note wi...”

“Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.”

“The thing about Wagner is we’re always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites … There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbo...”

“I have lived as a Jew in Berlin for the past 23 years, something that would not have been possible if I did not believe that the Germans had thought long and hard about their past. No one else has ...”

“Israel's lasting future depends on its government's willingness to enter into a genuine peace agreement with the Palestinians. That this also goes for the Palestinians grouped around Hamas hardly n...”

“The founding fathers of the State of Israel considered the principle of equality and the pursuit of peace as the bedrock of the society they were building. What happened? ... I still believe that d...”

“I live in Germany with great concern. Today, there is a highly dangerous new anti-Semitism in Germany, and reactions to this fact, both in society and politics, are far too weak. In the early 1990s...”

“His exceptional musical talent was already evident then and he has since developed into one of the the preeminent conductors of our time”

“I'm sure that there are many Israelis who dream of waking up one day to find the Palestinians gone. And there are many Palestinians who dream of going to bed at night and waking up the next morning...”

“I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through. And yet even they have differing positions … I respect that there are survivors...”