Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Yo-Yo Ma - Page 2

Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.

In performance, we have a greater purpose. The greater purpose is that we're communing together, and we want this moment to be really special for all of us. Because otherwise, why bother to have come at all? It's not about proving anything. It's about sharing something.

Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.

You must have a reason to be in the places to which you go, and you must do only things that you really care about.

Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it becomes your friend for life.

Music has always been transnational.

This middle age thing is a little weird. Some friends and mentors are gone, and there's a very forward-looking new generation coming up behind me. So it's very much finding my own place.

I don't always have a five-year plan. One thing you must do in life is keep your learning curve as high as possible.

I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.

I want to investigate different cultures, to see how their identities and values affect their music. It's one way I can get to know our world, at least to a certain depth.

One of the marks of a great teacher lies not only in an ability to impart knowledge but also in knowing when to encourage a student to go off on his own.

Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.

A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.

Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.

Perfection is not very communicative

When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.

I play an instrument that has four strings, and I'm still trying to get it right. What I've tried to do in the process of playing these four strings is to try and understand the people I meet, the stories they have to tell. And then become an advocate for them and their stories through music.

Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.