“Explaining why he preferred conducting the Berlin Philharmonic to the Vienna Philharmonic: ‘If I tell the Berliners to step forward, they do it. If I tell the Viennese to step forward, they do it. But then they ask why.’”
the quote, per Wikipedia, is from Brian Moynahan, ‘Funeral in Berlin’, The Sunday Times, January 30, 1983, quoted in Norman Lebrecht, The Book of Musical Anecdotes.