Quote

Each day I move toward that which I do not understand. The result is a continuous accidental learning which constantly shapes my life.

Yo-Yo Ma

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Yo-Yo Ma
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: October 7
Actor
Cellist
Composer
Music Pedagogue
Musician
Paris
France
Yo Yo Ma
YoYo Ma
Understand
Shapes
Life
Result
Toward
Move
Learning
Results
Accidental
Understanding
Continuous
Moving
Constantly

More quotes by Yo-Yo Ma

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People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'
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Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you're passionate about something, then you're more willing to take risks.
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Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.
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There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge.
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I think one of the great things about being a musician is that you never stop learning.
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As a child, you respond physically, tactically. You're delighted by sound, you're delighted by recognizing something. It's like hide and seek. Is it there? Is it not there? Is it this note? Is it not this note? It's one fantastic game.
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Music enhances the education of our children by helping them to make connections and broadening the depth with which they think and feel. If we are to hope for a society of culturally literate people, music must be a vital part of our children's education.
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When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.
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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.
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The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.
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What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do.
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I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people.
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I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well.
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With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.
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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.
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Sharing is a much better way to communicate than proving.
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There are limits to how much sound a cello can make. That's part of the framing of acoustical instruments. Finding what those limits might be, and then trying to suggest perhaps even the illusion of going beyond is part of that kind of effort.
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Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
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I think of a piece of music as something that comes alive when it is being performed, and I feel that my role in the transmission of music is to be its best advocate at that moment.
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After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.
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