“The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.” — Arthur Koestler
Quotations
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Ravel’s Bolero I submit as the most insolent monstrosity ever perpetrated in the history of music. From the beginning to the end of its 339 measures it is simply the incredible repetition of the same rhythm … and above it the blatant recurrence of an overwhelmingly vulgar cabaret tune that is little removed, in every essential of character, from the wail of an obstreperous back-alley cat.
— American Mercury, 1932
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“Time makes more converts than reason.” — Thomas Paine
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“That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.” — Thoreau
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“Walt Whitman is as unacquainted with art as a hog is with mathematics.” — London Critic, 1855
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“Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.” — Joseph Addison
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“It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in five years.”
— John von Neumann, 1949
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“I confess that, in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for 50 years. Two years later, we ourselves were making flights. This demonstration of my inability as a prophet gave me such a shock that I have ever since distrusted myself and have refrained from all prediction.” — Wilbur Wright
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“I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius. Why, in comparison with him, Raff is a giant, not to speak of Rubinstein, who is after all a live and important human being, while Brahms is chaotic and absolutely empty dried-up stuff.” — Tchaikovsky’s diary, Oct. 9, 1886
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“Honor is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall porters.” — G.K. Chesterton