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It is my conviction that the public always shows itself more honest in its spontaneity than do those who officially set themselves up as judges of works of art.

Igor Stravinsky

Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had a perfect knowledge.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Diamond Failure Knowledge Perfection World
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Himself Imitation Reality
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Average Genius Steal
Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Man Music Present Realization
Silence, which will save from shame, will also deprive me of fame.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Deep Fame Myself Risk Save Shame Silence
To continue in one path is to go backward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Back Oneself Path
The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Comment Music Pieces True
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 Learning Life Mistake Pursuit Wisdom
A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Cultural Familiar Unknown
Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Flow Music Order Structure Time
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

General Love Music Teaching Trouble
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Freedom Oneself Perspective Restriction
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Greatness Potential Steal
Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Possible Right Save Silence Wrong
All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Definite Music Point Succession
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

Drama Live Music Reading Relationship
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

End Music Pieces Song
There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Life Lyrics Music Nature
What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Chance Control Depression Element Fluctuation
Nothing is likely about masterpieces, least of all whether there will be any.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Master Music Song
One’s belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one’s conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren’t always right.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Belief Dangerous Oneself Right Sincere
One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Oneself Simplicity Truffle
Good composers don’t borrow, they steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Borrow One Liner Steal
My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Childhood Connection Hell Moments Myself Period
The profound meaning of music’s essential aim, is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Essential Man Meaning Unity
It’s one of nature’s way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Feeling Generation Nature Way
I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Criticism Day Dreams Music Painting Small

It is my conviction that the public always shows itself more honest in its spontaneity than do those who officially set themselves up as judges of works of art.

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It is my conviction that the public always shows itself more honest in its spontaneity than do those who officially set themselves up as judges of works of art.

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