Someone online tossed out this quote, but, sadly, without citation to back it up. I’d like to think Beethoven said it.

Beethoven [reportedly] said many times to his piano students:

“To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.”

I find that there is a discussion about its authenticity on Wikiquotes:

it goes around online, but i cannot find any source for this. maybe someone who speaks german can find the original?

–Attila.lendvai (talk) 11:11, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

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Falsche Noten zu spielen, ist unbedeutend. Ohne Leidenschaft zu spielen, ist unentschuldbar.

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My guess is that it’s made up. The earliest match I can find is from a 1997 magazine for school bands in the US: “Wrong notes are of little consequence, but to play without passion is inexcusable”. Grover cleveland (talk) 15:44, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

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Not a direct quote, but Beethoven did say something along those lines … according to this reddit discussion. Ferdinand Ries wrote about his experiences taking lessons from Beethoven. Look for (ctrl+F) ‘fehlerhaftem Klavierspiel’ (faulty piano performance) on this page and you’ll see the exact excerpt in both English and German. –IIBewegung (talk) 05:22, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

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It was in a piano tutoring scene from the 1994 Movie “Immortal Beloved”.

It’s an odd phenomenon:

People, inadvertently or not, attribute very good sayings (which would have stood well enough on their own) to great people, giving them a little extra luster, but cheapening them in the long run when the attribution turns out to be false.

It may be related to the fact that anyone can publish anything online, anonymously, as opposed to the pre-internet days, when publishing a false fact, claim, or statement would ruin the author’s reputation forever.