Immigrants To The United States

"Others may be regularly more flashy, though few can dazzle so dependably; and none can match him for power and refinement. He plays very loudly and very beautifully, very softly and thoroughly clean, straightforwardly, elegantly, and with a care for both the amenities of musical discourse and the clear transmission of musical thought. He is a master pianist and a master musician. There has not been his like since Busoni."

"Arthur Rubinstein once said to me that he couldn't think when he played, that something else took over. I also don't think when I play - something happens through me, but I am motivated by what I have thought before."

"My father, good or bad, mistakes or no, had a direct line from his heart to the music to the people, to the audience. He played with logic and his own inner truth."

"Rubinstein was a marvelous pianist, but entirely different than Horowitz. Rubinstein needed a piano where he would feel some resistance in the action, and which had a much warmer or broader sound, or a deeper, darker sound. A Horowitz piano is much more focused; the sound is much more brilliant."

"Rubinstein was jealous of anybody who had a great success. He was jealous of the Beatles and kept on talking about their tremendous success. When Toscanini died there was a big service in St. Patrick's Cathedral presided over by Cardinal Spellman. Then after a month the body was sent to Milan where there was another big funeral. Rubinstein could not get over it. "Like a king!" he told me and Wanda. "He had two funerals!" He didn't like Paderewski, he didn't like Rachmaninoff, he was always criticizing everybody."

"I liked him [Rubinstein] as a pianist. He was a good musician and had a fantastic repertoire. He never had a great technique, but certain things he played well. I heard him play some of the Chopin etudes, the easier ones with great panache and I told him I had never heard them played better. He said, "Do you mean it?" and I said, "Yes, I do mean it.""

"Rubinstein was wonderful. For three days he spent hours playing the piano in my room, and then asking me what I thought of this and that. After a while he told my mother that I had talent and he thought I should be a musician."

"Just meeting Rubinstein was a thrill for any pianist. He was a real link to tradition in western piano music. He was a friend of Rachmaninoff and he knew Debussy. The man was an inspiration to three generations of pianists."

"God bless him. He will be remembered forever."

"...In his fingers he has more skill than any of the rest of us."

"… if you look around the Christian faith, you won't find many of those proud people who are puffed up in their own 'fleshly' wisdom."

"Ray lives in a curious alterna-reality in which he claims everything is the product of divine design, which prompts the question of how he knows (other than the Bible told him so), what frame of reference he is using to distinguish design from non-design. I wonder if Ray has ever looked at those grains of sand he keeps bringing up under a microscope, though. When you do, do you know what you see?... No two are alike. No two have precisely the same chemical or mineral composition. Ray would, no doubt, insist that God is so awesome that he literally can design each and every individual grain of sand as lovingly as a work of art. That in his omnipotence, God can effortlessly lavish such loving attention on even the smallest thing. And that’s the problem when you argue with someone about their imaginary magical friend. There are no rules in magical thinking. If sand grains were designed, wouldn’t you expect to see more uniformity?"

"If we go to his blog and extend an invitation, he will simply delete it, thus enabling himself to continue claiming that we just aren’t inviting him, or maybe we’re scaaared of him, or whatever sustains the deluded fiction upon which he has constructed his life. Ray Comfort is a liar. The proof’s in the proverbial pudding."

"Your greatest strength, Ray, and possibly your only strength, is in pretending that you don't understand simple things."

"Ray Comfort is probably the very bottom of the creationist barrel. He's the worst of the bunch, and I've listened to Kent Hovind talk! So when I say Ray Comfort is really, really stupid, I'm saying something."

"The Living Waters Web site reveals Comfort to be obsessed with goading atheists, specifically Richard Dawkins, who is featured in almost as many of the site’s videos as Comfort is and whom Comfort has challenged to a public debate."

"[Comfort's indtroduction] says very little about “The Origin of Species” per se, limiting itself to familiar creationist canards about the complexity of the human eye and the absence of “transitional forms” from the fossil record. (It’s hard to lend much credence to the scientific arguments of a guy who thinks chimpanzees are monkeys.) There’s a brief biographical section on Darwin’s life, most of which has been plagiarized from a short text by Dr. Stan Guffey, as some bloggers have demonstrated. The rest has been plagiarized from Brian Regal’s introduction to the Barnes and Noble edition of “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin,” except for a timeline, which was plagiarized from an online resource. Nearly half of the introduction isn’t even about evolution at all, and consists of a hodgepodge of strained sky-diving metaphors and horror stories about pedophiliac killers. Lastly, although Comfort claimed in advance that “not one jot or tittle” of the text of “The Origin of Species” would be missing from his edition, four entire chapters were omitted. Comfort said that this was an error limited to the first printing, but his critics have claimed that these sections were intentionally left out because they contain strong evidence for Darwin’s theory."

"He accepts scientific findings, on the same grounds we do, unless those findings challenge or refute his existing beliefs – at which point he labels them faith-based, and rejects them. Yet while claiming he won’t believe things on faith, the entire justification for his closed-minded certainty about the existence of god is predicated on faith…faith that his perception of the experience he attributes to a god are actually reliable. This is not only hypocritical, it’s a particularly nefarious bit of self-deception that results in some of the most painful examples of cognitive dissonance that I’ve ever seen. In any other area, Ray seems to grasp that independent confirmation is a grand tool for increasing the accuracy of our perceptions of reality, but on the subject of the biggest questions – his own experience not only needs no independent verification, it trumps all information to the contrary."

"Dogs and cats came from a common ancestor, can you explain that?... Can you explain it now, what animal you're talking about that dogs and cats came from... It was arboreal?... What do you mean by 'arboreal'?"

"I think the greatest oxymoron on the face of this earth is to use the word 'science' along with 'evolution'. Evolution's a fairy tale for grown ups... It's unprovable, it's not been proved."

"… I think I'm a pig: Pigs have got eyes, pigs have got mouths, pigs have got teeth, I've got friends who eat like pigs, I sound like a pig when I sleep."

"I don't believe you're an ape: You're made in the image of God, with the knowledge of right and wrong."

"We don't need faith to believe in God because the whole of Creation, the whole of nature, is ordered. It isn't a semblance of order, it has order, from the atom through to the universe, we see the genius of God's creative hand."

"Aron, you do not have faith in your wife, you do not know your wife, you cannot demonstrate it to me, she does not exist, period... How would you prove me your wife exists?"

"I know God exists, I'm not stupid."

"Hey, you're gonna have to keep it simple for us folks! Keep the words simple so we can understand what you're talking about."

"[If I had literally heard the voice of Jesus] I'd check myself in to see a psychiatrist. I don't hear voices and anyone who does should really see a psychiatrist and get some help."

"Aron, if I said to you 'Imagine there's no New York, it's easy if you try,' I'm not saying New York doesn't exist, I'm saying it does exist, but imagine that it doesn't, and that's what John Lennon is saying."

"You think that God should somehow prevent evil. He should actually stop the murderer and the rapist. This is because you (understandably) consider those two acts to be evil. How about the liar and the thief, the fornicator, pornographer, blasphemer, and the adulterer? Do you think that they are evil and should be stopped? God considers them to be extremely evil. But that's where conversion comes in (the new birth spoken of in John 3). God miraculously removes the hatred from the heart. He changes us on the inside so that we want to stop doing all evil. So how sincere are you in your desire to see evil stopped? Are you prepared to start with yourself?"

"Right now the Jews are still surrounded by enemies who are sworn to their death as a nation. Their only hope is to turn to God with their whole heart, and if they obey Him, they will have victory. Only time will tell us if they have learned anything from history."

"I would never say that God used Hitler to punish the Jews. If God treated any of us justly and punished us according to our sins, we would all be in Hell in an instant. I'm Jewish and I am as guilty as any Gentile of violating His law. However, you and I get to stay alive for a time because God is rich in mercy, is filled with what the Bible calls "lovingkindness," and He particularly lavished this loving-kindness upon the Jewish nation. If you study the Scriptures, you will see that He promised them that if they loved and obeyed Him He would give them long life, health, prosperity, and protection from their enemies. But He also warned that if they disobeyed Him, His hand of protection would be removed."

"I thought it strange that medical science spent billions of dollars trying to find a cure for the common cold, and it did nothing to try to stop the aging process. It seemed insane that we were all going to die and nobody talked about it, asked why, or even looked for an answer to it."

"To receive the gift of eternal life, you must repent of your sins (turn from them), and put on the Lord Jesus Christ as you would put on a parachute— trusting in Him alone for your salvation. That means you forsake your own good works as a means of trying to please God (trying to bribe Him), and trust only in what Jesus has done for you. Simply throw yourself on the mercy of the Judge. The Bible says that He’s rich in mercy to all who call upon Him, so call upon Him right now. He will hear you if you approach Him with a humble and sorrowful heart. Do it right now because you don’t know when you will take that leap through the door of death. Confess your sins to God, put your trust in Jesus to save you, and you will pass from death to life. You have God’s promise on it."

"In Christianity, God Himself provided a “parachute” for us, and His word says regarding the Savior, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Just as a parachute solved your dilemma with the law of gravity and its consequences, so the Savior perfectly solves your dilemma with the Law of God and its consequences! It is the missing puzzle-piece that you need. How did God solve our dilemma? He satisfied His wrath by becoming a human being and taking our punishment upon Himself. The Scriptures tell us that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Christianity provides the only parachute to save us from the consequences of the Law we have transgressed."

"Interestingly, Islam acknowledges the reality of sin and hell, and the justice of God, but the hope it offers is that sinners can escape God’s justice if they do religious works. God will see these, and because of them, hopefully he will show mercy—but they won’t know for sure. Each person’s works will be weighed on the Day of Judgment and it will then be decided who is saved and who is not—based on whether they followed Islam, were sincere in repentance, and performed enough righteous deeds to outweigh their bad ones. So Islam believes you can earn God’s mercy by your own efforts. That’s like jumping out of the plane and believing that flapping your arms is going to counter the law of gravity and save you from a 10,000-foot drop. And there’s something else to consider. The Law of God shows us that the best of us is nothing but a wicked criminal, standing guilty and condemned before the throne of a perfect and holy Judge. When that is understood, then our “righteous deeds” are actually seen as an attempt to bribe the Judge of the Universe. The Bible says that because of our guilt, anything we offer God for our justification (our acquittal from His courtroom) is an abomination to Him, and only adds to our crimes. Islam, like the other religions, doesn’t solve your problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell."

"Amazingly, the religion of Buddhism denies that God even exists. It teaches that life and death are sort of an illusion. That’s like standing at the door of the plane and saying, “I’m not really here, and there’s no such thing as the law of gravity, and no ground that I’m going to hit.” That may temporarily help you deal with your fears, but it doesn’t square with reality. And it doesn’t deal with your real problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell."

"The religion of hinduism says that if you’ve been bad, you may come back as a rat or some other animal. If you’ve been good, you might come back as a prince. But that’s like someone saying, “when you jump out of the plane, you’ll get sucked back in as another passenger. If you’ve been bad, you go down to the Economy Class; if you’ve been good, you go up to First Class.” It’s an interesting concept, but it doesn’t deal with your real problem of having sinned against God and the reality of hell."

"The fury of Almighty God against evil is evidence of his goodness. If he wasn’t angered, he wouldn’t be good. We cannot separate God’s goodness from his anger. Again, if God is good by nature, he must be unspeakably angry at wickedness. But his goodness is so great that his anger isn’t confined to the evils of rape and murder. Nothing is hidden from his pure and holy eyes. He is outraged by torture, terrorism, abortion, theft, lying, adultery, fornication, pedophilia, homosexuality, and blasphemy. He also sees our thought-life, and he will judge us for the hidden sins of the heart: for lust, hatred, rebellion, greed, unclean imaginations, ingratitude, selfishness, jealousy, pride, envy, deceit, etc. Jesus warned, “But I say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”"

"You know that the law of gravity will kill you when you jump."

"The legacy of Darwin's theory can be seen in the rise of eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, and abortion."

"Adolf Hitler took Darwin's evolutionary philosophy to its logical conclusions."

"Darwin believed that women were not as competent as men, and less intelligent than men, but they were better than a dog."

"Darwin's racism has nothing to do with the credibility of the theory of evolution.... However, after much research, I do concede that you won't find anything in Darwin's writings that would indicate that he in any way felt blacks were to be treated as inferior or that his views of them were due to their skin color."

"If you find it hard to believe that there was an Intelligent Designer, give this some thought. Man, with all his genius, can’t make a rock, a leaf, a flower, a living singing bird, a croaking frog, or even a grain of dead sand from nothing. We can recreate, but we can’t create anything material from nothing, living or dead. Not a thing. Did you realize that if we could simply make one blade of grass without using existing materials, we could solve the world’s hunger problem? If we could make a blade of grass, we could then create a lot more grass, feed the green material through a machine that does what the common cow does, and have pure white full cream milk, then smooth cream, delicious yogurt, tasty cheese, and smooth butter. But we can’t make even one blade of grass from nothing, let alone giving it the ability to reproduce after its own kind, as regular grass does. We have no idea where to begin when it comes to creating. If that’s true, how intellectually dishonest is it to say that this entire incredible creation in which we live, came into existence with no Intelligent Designer?"

"Which do you think came first—the blood or the heart—and why? Did the heart in all these different species of fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals evolve before there were blood vessels throughout their bodies? When did the blood evolve? Was it before or after the vessels evolved? If it was before, what was it that carried blood to the heart, if there were no vessels? Did the heart beat before the blood evolved? Why was it beating if there was no blood to pump? If it wasn’t beating, why did it start when it had no awareness of blood? If the blood vessels evolved before there was blood, why did they evolve if there was no such thing as blood? And if the blood evolved before the heart evolved, what was it that caused it to circulate around the body? The marvelous human body (and the bodies of all the other creatures) consists of so many amazingly interdependent parts: a heart, lungs (to oxygenate the blood), kidneys (to filter wastes from the blood), blood vessels, arteries, blood, skin (to protect it all), etc. The intricate codependence of just the respiratory system and the circulatory system—not to mention all the other bodily systems—is difficult to explain."

"Just as a biplane and a jet share common features of wings, body, tires, engine, controls, etc.,... does not require that one must have evolved from the other naturally, without a maker. They argue it’s more reasonable to conclude that similar design indicates a common, intelligent designer. An architect typically uses similar building materials for numerous buildings, and a car manufacturer commonly uses the same parts in various models. So if creation had a common designer, we could expect to find a similar “blueprint” used in many different creatures."

"Reptiles don't turn into birds no matter how long you leave them."

"If you still want to paint the Old Testament God as being mean and the New Testament God as being nice, please realize that the God of the New Testament proclaimed the death sentence on every man, on every woman, and on every child of the human race."

"Don't believe all the absurdity that skeptics say about bats not being birds, other untruths such as the Bible saying that the world is flat, and the mockery of Israel's judicial system. Every one of these weak arguments has rational explanations for those who are prepared to soften their hearts and listen."

"Here's what any skeptic will find hard to swallow. The Lord Jesus Christ owned that donkey. He created every hair on its little head (see John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16), and you can't steal what you own. The temporal 'owner' was in reality just taking care of it for Him. How incredible that the Lord had need of a little donkey. But He did. He chose to be carried into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey. God has also chosen lowly creatures like us to carry the Savior to this sinful world. How incredible."