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Art

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“Cage's Music of Changes was a further indication that the arts in general were beginning to consciously deal with the "given" material and, to varying degrees, liberating them from the inherited, functional concepts of control.”
Earle Brown (1926–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty — this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine, But search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence, and poetry; Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.”
Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) said by 1667 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you are going to be a writer, you must be paranoid. The thing is, in the arts if you don't overreact, you fall asleep.”
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you oughtn't...”
Ogden Nash (1902–1971) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man" in The Family Album of Favorite Poems (1959) edited by P. Edward Ernest
“I knew I was going into one of the arts: I was drawing, acting, and writing. -->”
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) said by 1860 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then the case is the same in all the other arts for the orator and his rhetoric; there is no need to know the truth of the actual matters, but one merely needs to have discovered some device of persuasion which will make one appear to those who do not know to know better than those who know.”
Plato (429–349 BC) said by 349 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form.”
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) said by 1592 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Michael De Montaigne
“Our political life favors the extremes of speech; the man who is gifted in the arts of abuse is bound to be a notable, if not always a great figure.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.”
Adam Smith (1723–1790) said by 1790 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Neither in the arts, nor in logic, nor in life should an idea by in any way treated as a thing.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.”
Ben Jonson (1572–1637) said by 1637 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend, To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend Wine, true begetter of all arts that be; Wine, privilege of the completely free; Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong; Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong, Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!”
Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) said by 1953 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.”
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tibet... this is the highest country. No doubt it was inhabited before any other and could even have been the site of all creation and all science. The culture of the Indians, as is known is almost certainly came from Tibet, just as all our arts like agriculture, numbers, the game of chess, etc., seem to have come from India.”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) said by 1804 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.”
Murasaki Shikibu (970–1100) said by 1100 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.”
Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... And this is the origin of pop music: it's a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well.”
Pete Seeger (1919–2014) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pop Chronicles, Show 1 - Play A Simple Melody: Pete Seeger on the origins of pop music, interview recorded 2.14.1968.
“Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.”
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter declining the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith
“Mostly the adult Indians did not wish their children to learn these arts from the emissaries of what they astonishingly considered an alien, false and hostile God. ~ Ch. 21”
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I probably have a 20,000-word vocabulary. I'll match my wits with anyone on literature, science and the arts.”
Mike Tyson (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my opinion, Gustav Mahler's work is one of the most important and interesting products in the history of modern creative arts.”
Richard Strauss (1864–1949) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gustav Mahler, page 78. Originally written for a volume dedicated to Mahler edited by Paul Stephan, Munich 1910.
“The toughest thing about performing here is, where do you go from here? Next week, I'm at the Fort Lauderdale Performing Arts Center.”
Lewis Black (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That’s the key to modern Britain … only the mentally castrated are eligible for praise and awards. It’s against the law to be intelligent! The dumb have inherited the earth. Because of this, British arts are controlled by completely limited possibilities, and the same faces appear everywhere.”
Morrissey (born 1959) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: CULTURE Pop Icon Morrissey Says Diversity is Not a Strength, June 24 2019
“6 says, “Tina’s doing an arts degree.” “Oh?” I say, as if the eyebrow ring, blond hair with a streak of black and oppressive eye makeup hadn’t tipped me off. “Oh, let me guess,” Tina says. “He’s a marketer.” “Hi,” I say. …“I hope they pay you well for strangling the youth of this country with cultural conformity.”
Max Barry (born 1973) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was men’s ambitions, they said, that had perverted all the arts to ends of gain.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The arts alone give direct access to experience. To eliminate them from education - or worse, to tolerate them as cultural ornaments - is antieducational obscurantism. It is foisted on us by the pedants and snobs of Hellenistic Greece who considered artistic performance fit only for slaves...”
Peter Drucker (1909–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can tell you that once upon a time when I was doing public events people would ask me, "What do you think about the arts?, What do you think of the role of women?, What do you think of men?, What do you think of all of these things?", and now they ask one thing, and that one thing is this, "Is there hope?”
Margaret Atwood (born 1939) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Turning Pages: The Life and Literature of Margaret Atwood (September 13, 2007) Official television documentary credited on http://www.margaretatwood.ca/books_on.php
“A playwright … is … the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great.”
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Paris Review (Summer 1966)
“Outside the world of politics, one person in the world of the arts I would mention as an influence is Nick Cave, another person who has been around since the late 1970s. He has developed and changed remarkably, whilst remaining true to his vision. He has been a great help to me as well, without his knowing it.”
Nick Cave (born 1957) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Source: First Speech (1997)
“Spiritually we are at ground zero, sunk, bored to perdition. All our arts prove it. Since the renaissance, so mechanized, we repeat with almost futile variants the same hackneyed sentimentalities (we call them eternal values!) Love! Re-love No Love! More Love! [102]”
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you really want to make money, never make a decision based on money. 'Cause if you make-- if you chase money, you're gonna get less of it. If you chase a thing that you love -- that's interesting -- only because you love that thing, you'll make more money. I-- I just believe that's-- in the arts, that's the only way to make money, is to never consider money as a part of your decision.”
Jerry Seinfeld (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Comedy is so much closer to sports than the arts. Stand-up comedy is very, very close to sports: in the life of it, and the "do or die" of it. [...] Nobody cares how many hits you've had. There's guys on base now.”
Jerry Seinfeld (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagination without reason produces impossible monsters; with reason, it becomes the mother of the arts, and the source of its marvels.”
Francisco Goya (1746–1828) said by 1828 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted by Albert Frederick Calvert, in Goya; an account of his life and works; publisher London J. Lane, 1908; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, pp. 355-377
“One must beware of a formula good for everything, that will serve to interpret the other arts as well as reality, and that instead of creating will only produce a style, or rather a stylization.”
Georges Braque (1882–1963) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 422 - Braque's quote, Paris 1917
“Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world; and this is not a woman's province in a married state. Her sphere of action is not large, and if she is not taught to look into her own heart, how trivial are her occupations and pursuits! What little arts engross and narrow her mind!”
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) first seen 1787 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), "Matrimony", p. 100
“Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.”
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What strange arts necessity finds out.”
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) said by 1593 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“May it [the opposition to fine writing] be accounted for by the fact that the spirit of Puritanism, having been banished from the province of moral conduct, has found a refuge among the arts?”
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is my profound wish that this entire collection shall be devoted to the advancement of fine music for the continued enjoyment of music enthusiasts throughout the United States, be they students of the arts, performing artists, or members of that vast audience of music lovers among the American public.”
Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What an incalculable debt do we owe to that little speck of land, Greece.—The principles of taste, the finest models of composition, the doctrines and the glorious examples to which we owe political freedom, the arts, the sciences, architecture, sculpture, every thing that is great and splendid in literature and politics, must be considered as ultimately derived from that little peninsula.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1807 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Zachary Macaulay (8 September 1821), quoted in The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, Volume I: 1807–February 1831, ed. Thomas Pinney (1974), p. 163
“The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.”
Henry Clay (1777–1852) first seen 1834 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech, Senate (14 March 1834)
“…if we intend to pursue the history of our species in its further attainments, we may soon enter on subjects which will confine our observation to more narrow limits. The genius of political wisdom and civil arts appears to have chosen his seats in particular tracts of the earth, and to have selected his favourites in particular races of men.”
Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) said by 1816 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory.”
Vitruvius (80–15 BC) said by 15 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men have no right to profess themselves architects hastily, without having climbed from boyhood the steps of these studies and thus, nursed by the knowledge of many arts and sciences, having reached the heights of the holy ground of architecture.”
Vitruvius (80–15 BC) said by 15 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A liberal education forms... a single body. Those, therefore, who from tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning, recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all studies, and so they more readily comprehend them all.”
Vitruvius (80–15 BC) said by 15 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pytheos made a mistake by not observing that the arts are each composed of two things, the actual work and the theory of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in the individual subject, while the other the theory is common to all scholars.”
Vitruvius (80–15 BC) said by 15 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source