“These principles, like the notes of a piano, may be used in many various combinations.”
Source: 1910s, Ads and Sales (1911), p. 8-9
Attributed by WKCR jazz host Phil Schaap, after a guest commented on how Monk played a lot of "wrong" notes. (March 1976)
Source: Evan Spring, Phil Schaap Interview https://www.cc-seas.columbia.edu/wkcr/content/phil-schaap-interview, WKCR, 5 October, 1992
“These principles, like the notes of a piano, may be used in many various combinations.”
Source: 1910s, Ads and Sales (1911), p. 8-9
“I learned to play the piano on my mother's knee - that was before we got a piano.”
From the obit in the Boston Globe.
Quotations from Borge's performances
Source: Richard Dyer, "Laughter Was at the Heart of Victor Borge's Many Talents", Boston Globe, 29 December 2000
“Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.”
Post Reporter's Pulitzer Prize Is Withdrawn; Pulitzer Board Withdraws Post Reporter's Prize (19 April 1981)
“To sing a wrong note is insignificant, but to sing without passion is unforgivable.”
“To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable”
Not found in Beethoven's known works. It may be a summary of the following description of Beethoven from his piano pupil Ferdinand Ries: "When I left out something in a passage, a note or a skip, which in many cases he wished to have specially emphasized, or struck a wrong key, he seldom said anything; yet when I was at fault with regard to the expression, the crescendo or matters of that kind, or in the character of the piece, he would grow angry. Mistakes of the other kind, he said were due to chance; but these last resulted from want of knowledge, feeling or attention. He himself often made mistakes of the first kind, even playing in public."
Disputed
Source: "When Beethoven gave me a lesson" https://books.google.com/books?id=j8RIq67v51cC&pg=PA294&dq=%22when+beethoven+gave+me+a+lesson%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMI7Yyz0PiNyQIViDuICh1YIAzR#v=onepage&q=%22when%20beethoven%20gave%20me%20a%20lesson%22&f=false