Art quotes
22.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside art — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"When one has reached maturity in this art, one will have the formless form. It is like the dissolving or thawing [of] ice into water that can shape itself to any structure. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, one can fit in with any style."
"You don't take a photograph, you make it."
"Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible."
"Artists are going to be the metronome of this society."
"I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas."
"The arts are not simply skills: their concern is the intellectual, ethical, and spiritual maturity of human life. And in a time when religious and political institutions are so busy engraving images of marketable gods and candidates that they lose their vision of human dignity, the arts have become the custodians of those values which most worthily difine humanity, which most sensitively define Divinity."
"When I have won a victory I do not repeat my tactics but respond to circumstances in an infinite variety of ways."
"In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it!"
"We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art. The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice."
"You can't make an architect. But you can open the doors and windows toward the light as you see it."
"Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art."
"Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed."
"An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture."
"Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce."
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
"Untrained warriors are soon killed on the battlefield; so also persons untrained in the art of preserving their inner peace are quickly riddled by the bullets of worry and restlessness in active life."
"The true Martial Artist is not the one who fears change, but the one who causes it to happen."
"Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination."
"In my inner soul art and life are inseparable."
"I'd like to make as much art as I possibly can before I die, so I'm working on a few things."
