Benjamin Zander Quotes
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My job is to awaken possibility in other people.
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The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.
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As leaders, we're giving out grades in every encounter we have with people. We can choose to give out grades as an expectation to live up to, and then we can reassess them according to performance. Or we can offer grades as a possibility to live into. The second approach is much more powerful.
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Right. So if the eyes are shining, you know you're doing it. If the eyes are not shining, you get to ask a question. And this is the question: who am I being that my players' eyes are not shining? We can do that with our children, too. Who am I being, that my children's eyes are not shining? That's a totally different world.
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I'm so sorry for you; your lives have been so easy. You can't play great music unless your heart's been broken.
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The practice of giving an A transports your relationships from the world of measurement into the universe of possibility... This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.
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I settled on a game called I am a contribution. Unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side. It is not arrived at by comparison.
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Mistakes can be like ice. If we resist them, we may keep on slipping into a posture of defeat. If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.
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It is the tuning of the universe... It's as if at the beginning of the symphony God turns up the volume just a tiny bit.
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This is the moment — this is the most important moment right now. Which is: We are about contribution. That’s what our job is. It’s not about impressing people. It’s not about getting the next job. It’s about contributing something.
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He had realized that the labels he had been taking so seriously are human inventions--it's all a game. The Number 68 is invented and the A is invented, so we might as well choose to invent something that brightens our life and the lives of the people around us.
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Would you think of somebody who you adore, who’s no longer there? A beloved grandmother, a lover — somebody in your life who you love with all your heart, but that person is no longer with you. Bring that person into your mind, and at the same time follow the line all the way from B to E, and you’ll hear everything that Chopin had to say.
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I make myself a relentless architect of the possibilities of human beings.
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Imagine Martin Luther King saying, 'I have a dream ... But I don't know if the others will buy it.'
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It's not a question of how much power you can hoard for yourself, but how much you can give away.
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Live the rest of your life in possibility.
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In the measurement world, we set a goal and strive to achieve it. In the universe of possibility, we set the context and let life unfold.
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I have a definition of success.
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When you make a mistake, throw your hands in the air and say "How fascinating!"
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I have a definition of success. For me it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.
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Look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it.
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How often do we stand convinced of the truth of our early memories, forgetting that they are assessments made by a child? We can replace the narratives that hold us back by inventing wiser stories, free from childish fears, and, in doing so, disperse long-held psychological stumbling blocks.
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Everybody loves classical music they just don't know about it yet.
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Life is revealed as a place to contribute and we as contributors. Not because we have done a measurable amount of good, but because that is the story we tell.