Art quotes

Art

22.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Art quotes (page 24 of 1107)

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Ingmar Bergman Film Director, Screenwriter
Art

"No other art-medium–neither painting nor poetry–can communicate the specific quality of the dream as well as the film can. When the lights go down in the cinema and this white shining point opens up for us, our gaze stops flitting hither and thither, settles and becomes quite steady. We just sit there, letting the images flow out over us. Our will ceases to function. We lose our ability to sort things out and fix them in their proper places. We're drawn into a course of events–we're participants in a dream. And manufacturing dreams, that's a juicy business."

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Niccolo Machiavelli Political Philosopher, Historian
Art

"There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not. It is simply unreasonable to expect that an armed man should obey one who is unarmed, or that an unarmed man should remain safe and secure when his servants are armed."

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Leonard Bernstein Composer, Conductor
Art

"A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers."

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Jane Alexander Actress, Director
Art

"When we teach a child to sing or play the flute, we teach her how to listen. When we teach her to draw, we teach her to see. When we teach a child to dance, we teach him about his body and about space, and when he acts on a stage, he learns about character and motivation. When we teach a child design, we reveal the geometry of the world. When we teach children about the folk and traditional arts and the great masterpieces of the world, we teach them to celebrate their roots and find their own place in history."

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Bruce Lee Martial Artist, Actor, Director
Art

"A teacher is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself."

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Art

"I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue."

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Henry David Thoreau Writer, Philosopher
Art

"But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,--nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon."

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Frida Kahlo Painter
Art

"The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration."

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Maya Lin Architect, Artist
Art

"Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you."

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Michelle Obama Lawyer, Author, First Lady
Art

"The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation."

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C. S. Lewis Writer, Scholar
Art

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

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Alan Watts Philosopher, Writer
Art

"Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons."

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