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 about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.

For many people, music is here to let them forget the daily chores of life.

Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life - one that requires much professionalism.

I believe education is much more important than we assume.

No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.

I don't like possessions.

The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.

I maintain music is not here to make us forget about life. It's also here to teach us about life: the fact that everything starts and ends, the fact that every sound is in danger of disappearing, the fact that everything is connected - the fact that we live and we die.

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.

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 have no chance of escaping the violence.

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

Live life to the full, and become more curious every day. The more you find out about life, the richer your music-making will be.

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.

Once you start playing a piece, there is a connection between every note. You cannot say, 'I will not concentrate on this note.' You cannot ignore things the way you do in the rest of your life.

Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.

There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle.

Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective.

The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can't understand it.

Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead.

US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.

Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.

Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.

In my mother's belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in.

I liked very much when we lived in Hampstead. We would go for walks on the Heath. I liked it better than living in the centre of town.

There are wonderful restaurants in London. I love Indian food and I like Arab food, and I go very often to the Arab restaurant Noura.

What the world is saying to us human beings is, 'Don't stick to the old ways, learn to think anew.' And that's what musicians do every day.

I have music in my brain all the time, all sorts.

When you love somebody and they die young and you are young, too, it is very hard.

I love conducting. What I'm tired of is music administration. I don't want that. I just want to make music.

I can't stand going out to one more dinner with some Mrs. So-and-So who might leave a million dollars to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she dies.

The Barenboim Foundation has nothing to do with politics.

You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.

It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer's life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer's works.

When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace.

You used to queue for three days and two nights for tickets for Rubinstein. People stayed in the queue for the whole day.

In Arab culture, music is for celebration. You don't play music at funerals.

The Iranian government still denies the Holocaust - so you can't take them seriously. And the Israeli government spreads rumours and disinformation about Iran - because it needs to for the creation of panic. I find these theological states - and in this respect, Israel and Iran are twin brothers - very, very dangerous.

I have loved Elliott Carter's music for many years.

When you get to be 103, modernism is a very wide concept.

The problem with listening to music today is that there's so much of it everywhere. We've got used to hearing music without actually listening to it.

Controversial means somebody who makes people think. And if you are afraid of people who will be against you, you might as well stay home and do nothing.

I cannot be music director at La Scala and at Staatsoper. This would be unfair to one of the two institutions.

I used to conduct the last opera in Berlin on Sunday, get on a plane on Monday to Chicago, and start a rehearsal that same night, if it was a performance week.

To play four hands requires two people who have great affinity for each other.

When I played my first concert with an orchestra, I was eight years old in Berlin.

I have accumulated so many experiences, so much, that I want to be able to realize so many things. This is why I have basically given up most of my positions.

I am the conductor for life of the Staatskapelle in Berlin, which fills me with tremendous joy because I feel absolutely at one with them. When we play, I have a feeling that together we manage to create one collective lung for the whole orchestra so that everybody in the stage breathes the music in the same way.

Most of the time I spend looking for the 25th hour in the day, the ninth day in the week, the 32nd day in the month and the 367th, eighth or 70th day in the year because I feel I have a very rich life.

I am permanently relaxed.

I don't believe in changing the unchangeable.