Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,159,190 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Art
LoveFriendshipHappinessHopeFearCourageDeathLifeTimeWarPeaceFreedomTruthWisdomKnowledgeScienceArtMusicNatureMoneyWorkPowerGodBeautyLaughterFamilySuccess and failureChangeDreamsBooks and reading
“Nestroy's words ought to apply to an artist and an idea: "I have made a prisoner, and he won't let go of me!”
Karl Kraus (writer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A great artist is always before his time or behind it.”
George Moore (novelist) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Conversations with George Moore (1929) by Geraint Goodwin, p. 123
“Leo looked at me with a warning glance to be patient, silent and respectful, and disappeared amongst the crowd... I perceived familiar faces, serious or smiling. I saw the figure of Albertus Magnus, the ferryman Vasudeva, the artist Klingsor, and others. p. 68”
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I really thought that the make-up artist for Cinderella Man should have won. I mean, it's so hard to make Russell Crowe look like he got in a fight.”
Jon Stewart (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I were a better artist, I'd be a painter, and if I were a better writer, I'd write books — but I'm not, so I draw cartoons!”
Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1992, as quoted by Tom Tomorrow in his comic strip This Modern World (21 February 2000)
“An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.”
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.”
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 39: 'Huysmans and Redon', (written in 1889, published 1953)
“No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.”
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) said by 1805 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, — through the world's history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.”
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) said by 1805 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No artist's masterpiece can match a mother's creation of a successful child, one who has been freed to explore and to grow. ... Success is measured not only by who we are, but by what gifts we give. As the old chief said, "The gift is not complete until it is given again." Ah, the mother whose gift to the world is a person!”
Gerry Spence (1929–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When . . . some leisurely passer-by stopped . . . and spoke of cheating, that was in its way the stupidest lie ever invented by indifference and inborn malice, since it was not the hunger artist who was cheating, he was working honestly, but the world was cheating him of his reward.”
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The candle aimed its spear of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The walls, where there was room, were well decorated with calendars and posters showing bright, improbable girls with pumped-up breasts and no hips—blondes, brunettes and redheads, but always with this bust development, so that a visitor of another species might judge from the preoccupation of artist and audience that the seat of procreation lay in the mammaries.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An artist should be open on all sides to every kind of light and darkness.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Appendix, letter to Elizabeth Otis and Chase Horton (20 April 1959)
“The artist has never been a dictator, since he understands better than anybody else the variations in human personality.”
Heywood Broun (1888–1939) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bring on the Artist", New York World Telegram, June 19, 1933
“The criminal, like the artist, is a social explorer.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in "Marshall McLuhan, Author, Dies; Declared 'Medium Is the Message'" by Alden Whitman, The New York Times, January 1, 1981
“The artist is the person who invents the means to bridge biological inheritance and the environments created by technological innovation.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The role of the artist is to create an Anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment. (p. 31)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he post-Joycean artist as lecher-poet, obsessed with death, language and his own insides.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Malcolm Bradbury, The Modern British Novel, 1993.
“The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth.”
William Golding (1911–1993) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Frank Kermode, BBC Third Programme (28 April 1959)
“Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.”
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987)
“It seems hard for the American people to believe that anything could be more exciting than the times themselves. What we read daily and view on the TV has thrust imagined forms into the shadow. We are staggeringly rich in facts, in things, and perhaps, like the nouveau riche of other ages, we want our wealth faithfully reproduced by the artist.”
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 67
“A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit.”
George MacDonald (1824–1905) said by 1905 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If they think that an artist can destroy their faith, then their faith is rather fragile.”
Marilyn Manson (born 1969) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in BBC News (23 August 2005)
“The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely considered the other possible reactions and found them inadequate.”
Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Anatomy of the Absurd" (1962), p. 104
“In most writers, style is a welcome, an invitation, a letting down of the drawbridge between the artist and the world. Shaw had no time for such ruses. Unlike most of his countrymen, he abominated charm, which he regarded as evidence of chronic temperamental weakness.”
Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bernard Shaw" (1956), p. 102
“Today, all the normal mischances of living have been multiplied, a million-fold, by the potentialities for destruction, for an unthinking act of collective suicide, which man's very triumphs in science and invention have brought about. In this situation the artist has a special task and duty: the task of reminding men of their humanity and the promise of their creativity.”
Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the Name of Sanity (1954)
“Every artist writes his own autobiography.”
Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“as an artist I say to myself, “If you’re that good, how come you can’t be yourself?”
Joni Mitchell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've always been a painter. I didn't come to it late. I was always the school artist. I came to music late, you know, relatively. I mean, I picked up — I tried it at 8. I took a year of piano lessons and wrote my first song when I was 8, wrote it out in notes.”
Joni Mitchell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Our goal was to] translate aspects of culture never successfully recorded by the scientist, although often caught by the artist, into some form of communication sufficiently clear and sufficiently unequivocal to satisfy the requirements of scientific enquiry.”
Margaret Mead (1901–1978) said by 1978 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rays were blazing through the of the earth, the horizon became bright orange, gradually passing into all the colors of the rainbow: from light blue to dark blue, to violet and then to black. What an indescribable gamut of colors! Just like the paintings of the artist Nicholas Roerich.”
Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement of April 1961, as quoted in Warrior of Light : The Life of Nicholas Roerich : Artist, Himalayan explorer and visionary (2002) by Colleen Messina, p. 46
“A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract; and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, "I" do not hit, "it" hits all by itself.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bruce Lee: Enter the Dragon (1973); In a conversation with an older member of the temple.
“Every artist who’s really into their work disappears into the creative flow. This is akin to some of the concentration-oriented meditations of the various sacred traditions. Images come in all different ways. You can get visions when you’re tripping on drugs, when you’re dreaming or in a hypnogogic state before dropping off to sleep, while listening to music or even waiting for the subway.”
“Creators aligned with Divine Will Make the soul perceptible. Artist priests with minimal dogma Transfix, transform, and evolve The chaotic melding of cultures, Through the dross of ego To superconsciousness fusion With the Nature-field.”
“An artist can never know in advance just how his vision might be articulated in reality.”
Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Declarations about war and politics are not fitting for an artist, who must give his attention to his creations and his works.”
Richard Strauss (1864–1949) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quotation made in an article published in 1914. Strauss had refused to sign the Manifesto of German artists and intellectuals supporting the German role in the war. Other signatories included Strauss' friends and collea…
“I think the main thing is that I very rarely recognise the actual interview in print. To me, it's like being painted by an artist. And then you see the picture, and they've painted someone else.”
Morrissey (born 1959) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Oor magazine (February 1987)
“The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival.”
André Malraux (1901–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ordinary man puts up a struggle against all that is not himself, whereas it is against himself, in a limited but all-essential field, that the artist has to battle.”
André Malraux (1901–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What kind of bananas do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?”
"Weird Al" Yankovic (born 1959) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Replying to a fan criticizing the poor seats a reviewer of a concert received. "Ask Al" Q&As for September 6, 2004.
“I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A scientist can pretend that his work isn’t himself, it’s merely the impersonal truth. An artist can’t hide behind the truth. He can’t hide anywhere.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook Because my hand thinks I'm an artist But my heart knows I'm a poet It's just words they mean so little to me.”
Conor Oberst (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Artist and perceiver alike begin with what may be called a total seizure, an inclusive qualitative whole not yet articulated, not distinguished into members.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now in addition to being applauded as a five-time Grammy-Award-winning artist, Gloria now has the distinction of being titled a two-time New York Times best-selling author!”
Gloria Estefan (born 1957) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: comment by Frank Amadeo, president of EEI, after Estefan's second children's book, "Noelle's Treasure Tale," debuted in third position on The New York Times children's picture book best seller list for the week of Octob…
“With the pride of an artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance.”
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden (1968) by David W. Noble, p. 204
“Creativity comes from the freedom to fail. And freedom to fail comes from experimentation, and that's what gives something its individuality. And, you know, I think her courage, which is the positive way of interpreting it, or bloody-mindedness, which is the negative, is part of what gives her real value as an artist.”
Peter Gabriel (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An artist must be man, woman and demi-god.”
Henry Adams (1838–1918) said by 1918 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source