Famous quotes
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“From these early beginnings, and from the fact that nature had... equipped their minds with the powers of thought and understanding, thus putting all other animals under their sway, they next gradually advanced from the construction of buildings to the other arts and sciences, and so passed from a rude and barbarous mode of life to civilization and refinement.”
Vitruvius (80–15 BC) said by 15 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difference between the arts arises because of the difference in the nature of the mediums of expression and the emphasis induced by the nature of each medium. Each means of expression has its own order of being, its own units.”
Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus — not imitation.. .From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life — all movement and rhythm — time and light, color and mood — in short, all reality in Form and Thought.”
Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Hans Hofmann (2000) by James Yohe
“The society was the nearest thing to perfection that had ever existed; vital without being violent, stable without being stagnant. This society had resulted from a number of factors, the most important being a small population served by a sophisticated technology and an equally sophisticated administrative system. The arts were alive, there was universal literacy, the philosophies flourished.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Arts may ply fantastic anatomy but nature is always herself in her wildest moods of extravagence.”
John Clare (1793–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a great deal to be said for the Arts. For one thing they offer the only career in which commercial failure is not necessarily discreditable.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We're free and easy. We're not very authoritative. We have no doctrine, no dogma. It is a community of mostly people who are interested in the arts, literature, photography, music.”
Irving Fiske (1908–1990) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1984 interview, quoted in The Burlington Free Press (6 May 1990), p. 5
“Cute,” she said, smiling. “If the liberal arts do nothing else they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Woman's flirtatious arts of self-concealment mean man's approach must take the form of rape.”
Camille Paglia (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end.”
Camille Paglia (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time and time again have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been and passed away and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.”
H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it. Does not our subject look important enough now? I say that without these arts, our rest would be vacant and uninteresting, our labour mere endurance, mere wearing away of body and mind.”
William Morris (1834–1896) said by 1896 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I managed to fail Arts I, a course that a moderately intelligent amoeba could have passed without special coaching.”
Robert Hughes (1938–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain.”
George Steiner (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To a degree which is difficult to determine, the esoteric impulse in twentieth-century music, literature and the arts reflects calculation. It looks to the flattery of academic and hermeneutic notice. Reciprocally, the academy turns towards that which appears to require its exegetic, cryptographic skills.”
George Steiner (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It often happens that we are most touched by what we are least capable of. Evanescent delicacy is not the quality in the arts that I admire most, but it is often the characteristic by which I am most reduced to envy.”
Clive James (1939–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Actually, the father of mixed martial arts, if you will, was Bruce Lee. If you look at the way Bruce Lee trained, the way he fought, and many of the things he wrote, he said the perfect style was no style. You take a little something from everything. You take the good things from every different discipline, use what works, and you throw the rest away.”
Dana White (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Both in Greece and in Provence the poetry attained its highest rhythmic and metrical brilliance at times when the arts of verse and music were most closely knit together, when each thing done by the poet had some definite musical urge or necessity bound up within it.”
Ezra Pound (1885–1972) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Tradition", in Poetry, ed. by Harriet Monroe, III, 3 (December 1913), p. 137; reprinted in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (1968), p. 91.
“Thus, the Semitic race is recognizable almost solely through negative characteristics: it has neither mythology, nor epic, nor science, nor philosophy, nor fiction, nor plastic arts, nor civil life; in sum an absence of complexity, of nuance, an exclusive sentiment of unity.”
Ernest Renan (1823–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, trans. Sonia Wichmann (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 96.
“And I submit that this is what the real, no-shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about. How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.”
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I thought they were very good at what they did.” ”Of course they were good!” Brill glanced sharply. “The issue is what one chooses to be good at. The arts are fine, for hobbies. I play six instruments, myself. But they pose no great challenge to a mature mind.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've had different opportunities in my life, but I've tried to maintain the spirit of an amateur. Our culture roots everything in the barometer of success and how much money you make. But if you really just aspire to a life in the arts, it's really not a barometer at all.”
Ethan Hawke (born 1970) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: New York Daily News (2000-05-11)
“Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.”
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to A.S. Suvorin (December 27, 1889)
“In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.”
Pauline Kael (1919–2001) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Newsweek (December 24, 1973).
“The slender, swift Bruce Lee was the Fred Astaire of martial arts, and many of the fights that could be merely brutal come across as lightning-fast choreography.”
Pauline Kael (1919–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..that famous idea of 'beauty', which is, as everybody says, the goal of the arts. If it is their only goal, what becomes of the men like Rubens, Rembrandt, and all the northern natures generally, who prefer other qualities? Demand purity, In a word beauty.. .In general the men of the north tend less in that direction. The Italian prefers ornament.”
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote 1847, as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 229
“Slavery discourages arts and manufactures.”
George Mason (1725–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The arts babblative and scribblative.”
Robert Southey (1774–1843) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, No. 1, pt. 2 (1829).
“Criticism will need an injection of humility — that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a temporary capacity. Since the critic exists only for introducing and explaining, he must be readily intelligible; he has no special vocabulary: criticism is in no way a science or a system.”
Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On reflection, moral judgment in the arts appears rather as a tribute to their power to influence emotion and possibly conduct. And reflecting further on what some critics do today, one sees that a good many have merely shifted the ground of their moralism, transferring their impulse of righteousness to politics and social issues.”
Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Critics Are Good For" (1988), p. 69
“Not all the arts of diplomacy are learned solely in its practice. There are other exercise yards.”
Dean Acheson (1893–1971) said by 1971 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“France, fam'd in all great arts, in none supreme.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) said by 1888 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the order of natural phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of them mere dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false are magic.”
James Frazer (1854–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many colleges of liberal arts and the researches of many scholars in the humanities and the social studies are important only to those whose livelihood depends upon them.”
Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Great Conversation (1952), p. 56
“Surrealism was a genuine addition to the repertoire of avant-garde arts, its novelty attested by the ability to produce shock, incomprehension, or what amounted to the same thing, a sometimes, embarrassed laughter, even among the older avant-garde.”
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Arts 1914-1945
“A skepticism concerning what one beholds - whether in the arts, in the sciences, or in the deeply etched channels of fashionable response - contains a force essential to the survival of civilized man.”
Robert Ardrey (1908–1980) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Plays of Three Decades: Thunder Rock / Jeb / Shadow of Heroes (1968)
“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”
D. James Kennedy (1930–2007) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reclaiming America for Christ" conference February, 2005
“Teachers, not students, are the ones who are failing. As Albert Einstein said that “all religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree,” the detachment of philosophy – the forefather of all knowledge and academic disciplines – from mathematics, sciences, and technology is the fundamental reason for failure in modern-day K-12 and higher education.”
Newton Lee wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even a large majority of beautiful music, great literature, and wonderful work of arts depicts human suffering, injustice, fears, and unfulfilled desires.”
Newton Lee wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The War is the first and only thing in the world today. The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that for relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field.”
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man isn’t a block that remains stationary though the psychologists treat him so — and most take an insane pride in believing it. Consistency! He varies; Hamlet today, Caesar tomorrow; here, there, somewhere — if he is to retain his sanity, and why not? The arts have a complex relation to society. The poet isn’t a fixed phenomenon, no more is his work.”
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In any evolutionary process even in the arts the search for novelty becomes corrupting.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we speak, in gestures or signs, we fashion a real object in the world; the gesture is seen, the words and the song are heard. The arts are simply a kind of writing, which, in one way or another, fixes words or gestures, and gives body to the invisible.”
Émile Chartier (1868–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each of the Arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a Muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.”
Eliza Farnham (1815–1864) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Woman and Her Era (1864), pt. 2, ch. 1
“..[that] the overturning of the old world of arts will be etched across your 'palms' (recto)”
Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: admonition from the cover of Malevich's 'novykh sistemakh v iskusstve' (Vitebsk: Unovis, 1919); the cover is reproduced in Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art, Larissa A. Zhadova, (trans. Alexander Lieve…
“The first impression and a natural one is, that the fine arts have risen or declined in proportion as patronage has been given to them or withdrawn, but it will be found that there has often been more money lavished on them in their worst periods than in their best, and that the highest honours have frequently been bestowed on artists whose names are scarcely now known.”
John Constable (1776–1837) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture, Literary and Scientific Institution, Hampstead, (25 July 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie
“The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).”
William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Our Mission Statement" in National Review (November 19, 1955).
“In Etruria.. the nation stagnated and decayed in political helplessness and indolent opulence, a theological monopoly in the hands of the nobility, stupid fatalism, wild and meaningless mysticism, the arts of soothsaying and mendicant priestcraft gradually developed themselves, till they reached the height at which we afterwards find them.”
Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only party hacks and the ambitious, the Henry's of this world following on the heels of the Milliéres, the grotesque imitators of the Commune of 1793.. .What an encouragement all these bloodthirsty caperings are for the arts! But there is at least one consolation in our misfortunes: that we're not politicians and have no desire to be elected as deputies.”
Édouard Manet (1832–1883) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Félix Bracquemond (21 March 1871), published in Manet by Himself (1995) by Julliet Wilson-Bareau
“The Arts, especially film, transcend all cultural barriers, hopefully offering an avenue where all people can find a common place to meet, understand each other, and nurture a safe world for all our children to grow strong within.”
Carson Grant (born 1950) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kaminsky, Denise, Aug 2006, "Carson Grant: Actor/Artist- A Lifetime of Art", Denise's Interviews and Media News, p. 1