I want my word to be up to the scale of the feat of arms performed by the Russian soldier.
Every performer who ever performed in rock and roll or even close to it is lying if they tell you that they weren't influenced in some way or another by Elvis Presley. He turned the world around.
A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it.
So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.
Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.
You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.
What a vast Traffick is drove, what a variety of Labour is performed in the World to the Maintenance of Thousands of Families that altogether depend on two silly if not odious Customs; the taking of Snuff and smoking of Tobacco; both which it is certain do infinitely more hurt than good to those that are addicted to them!
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.
There are few surer ways to become disliked by men than to perform well where they have performed poorly.
I'm pleased that they performed as well as they did while we've been in Miami and that's about as far as it goes. Now, we've got to go home and play as well or better.
Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment. . . ?
If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn't do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.
The first great work (a task performed by few) Is that yourself may to yourself be true.
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.
Remembering that life can be full of surprises is useful in any part of your life. You can try a new way of singing a song you've performed for years, a new way of showing your family your love for them, or a new recipe. Don't just play the licks you know. We're all improvising all the time - it's good to recognize that and embrace it.
And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a "new man" and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist.
The underlying foundation of all religion is performance - whether it's a tribal dance around a campfire to satisfy the fire god, or a dead religious activity performed week after week by an evangelical Christian with the intent of impressing his God. It's all religious performance, and God isn't impressed by our performance. What impresses Him is faith.
Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money. . . If Oxford undergraduates were paid for their work, I would have performed miracles of scholarship and become Regius Professor of Modern History.
How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death.
I didn't do improv in college, I never performed, I didn't do theater either. I was in student government, I was a history major.