Yehudi Menuhin quotes

Yehudi Menuhin was an American-born violinist and conductor, regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century. Renowned for his expressive performances, he inspired audiences worldwide and collaborated with many prominent artists. He dedicated much of his life to promoting music education and fostering international understanding. Here are 45 of his quotes:

I can only think of music as something inherent in every human being - a birthright. Music coordinates mind, body and spirit.

Yehudi Menuhin

The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet.

Yehudi Menuhin

The violinist must possess the poet's gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within.

Yehudi Menuhin

To play great music, you must keep your eyes on a distant star.

Yehudi Menuhin

I would hate to think I am not an amateur. An amateur is one who loves what he is doing. Very often, I'm afraid, the professional hates what he is doing. So, I'd rather be an amateur.

Yehudi Menuhin

Homeopathy is the safest and more reliable approach to ailments and has withstood the assaults of established medical practice for over 100 years.

Yehudi Menuhin

Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility - these are the very foundation of any real civilization, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.

Yehudi Menuhin

The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem. It is the currency of human exchanges, which enables the sharing of states of the soul and conscience, and the discovery of new fields of experience.

Yehudi Menuhin

We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process... We have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee. The only rigidity lies in our will, our conviction that we are on the right road and that our initiatives are most pressing.

Yehudi Menuhin

Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child's dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love.

Yehudi Menuhin

Actually, I was gazing in my usual state of being half absent in my own world and half in the present. I have usually been able to 'retire' in this way. I was also thinking that my life was tied up with the instrument and would I do it justice?

Yehudi Menuhin

The teacher offers guidance here and there, but the primary factor, the driving force, in your relationship and work together is the student's own commitment and desire to learn. Teaching is like sailing: The wind and the sails give the boat its motion. Your role (as a teacher) is to steer and guide.

Yehudi Menuhin

This is the best and ultimate purpose of conducting: Not only to lead (the musicians) and keep them together, not only to make their performance easier and simpler, but also to guide them so that they can play as they have always longed to play.

Yehudi Menuhin

We in the Western world have grown to understand matter as imprisoned light, and light as liberated matter, yet this has had no influence on our spiritual thought. In practical terms it only led to the creation of the atom bomb.

Yehudi Menuhin

There comes a time when the student turns his back on the teacher. His playing cannot have the necessary security, autonomy, self-faith, or communicative power until he believes his interpretation is his own.

Yehudi Menuhin

Even at the risk of losing all the golden eggs of the future, I had to find out what made the goose lay those eggs.

Yehudi Menuhin

What fascinated my imagination was the tremendous feat, which I felt I should be perfectly able to accomplish.

Yehudi Menuhin

The idea that a pupil is a passive recipient, a container waiting to be filled by the teacher's knowledge and instruction - all this is nonsense. Teaching is a living relationship, of give and take, of mutual learning.

Yehudi Menuhin

In playing Beethoven the violinist should be a medium. There is little that is personal or that can be reduced to ingratiating sounds, pleasing slides and so on. Everything is dictated by the significance, the weight, structure and direction of the notes and passages themselves.

Yehudi Menuhin

To be an outstanding musician, you have to be very attentive to the smallest detail and willing to have infinite patience in the pursuit of your ideal.

Yehudi Menuhin

When I was a boy no one seemed to ask where the energies come from. Land, oil, coal, air seemed inexhaustible. Now we are realizing how our very life depends upon restoring not only our balance with nature, but also that balance within ourselves. We are depleting our reserves of spirit, health, courage and faith at an alarming rate. The quiet practice of yoga is, in its humble yet effective way, an antidote.

Yehudi Menuhin

I imagine that whatever contribution I can make to teaching derives from having had to rethink and re-create my technique.

Yehudi Menuhin