Famous Quotes & Sayings

Edmund Wilson

Every work of art is a trick by which the artist manipulates appearances.

Edmund Wilson

The most immoral and disgraceful and dangerous thing that anybody can do in the arts is knowingly to feed back to the public its own ignorance and cheap tastes.

Edmund Waller

In other things the knowing artist may Judge better than the people; but a play, (Made for delight, and for no other use) If you approve it not, has no excuse.

Edmund Waller

If its length be not considered a merit, it hath no other.

Edmund Waller

Ingenious to their ruin, every age improves the art and instruments of rage.

Bill Nye

Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he's a human calculator. He says it's a skill he learned as a kid. Now he's a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice.

Bill O'Reilly

I just think Barack [Obama], he doesn't dig being asked at all. He's got a bit of an imperious nature about him. I guess nobody has told him that nobody reads newspapers anymore. That is a dying art form.

Bill Murray

It's hard to be an artist. It's hard to be anything. It's hard to be.

Bertolt Brecht

If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.

Bertolt Brecht

Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences. ... In my view, the great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding.

Bertolt Brecht

Art is not a mirror. Art is a hammer.

Bertolt Brecht

A good soldier has his heart and soul in it. When he receives an order, he gets a hard on, and when he drives his lance through his enemy's guts, he comes.

Bertolt Brecht

Firebugs dragging their gasoline bottles Are approaching the Academy of Arts, with a grin. And so, instead of embracing them, Let us demand the freedom of the elbow To knock the bottles out of their filthy hands. Even the most blockheaded bureaucrat, Provided he loves peace, Is a greater lover of the arts Than any so-called art-lover Who loves the arts of war.

Bertolt Brecht

For art to be 'unpolitical' means only to ally itself with the 'ruling' group.

Bertolt Brecht

All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.

Bertolt Brecht

Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.

Benjamin Millepied

The idea that ballet is a white art is absurd and shocking, and it’s gone on for too long. Nothing would make me happier than having a company that reflects society, to have dancers onstage that people can relate to.

Benjamin E. Mays

In this perilous world, if a black boy wanted to live a halfway normal life and die a natural death he had to learn early the art of how to get along with white folks.

Benjamin Haydon

The only legitimate artists in England are the architects.

Benjamin Haydon

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Bertrand Russell

There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.

Bertrand Russell

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment.

Bertrand Russell

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Bernard de Mandeville

They that examine into the Nature of Man, abstract from Art and Education, may observe, that what renders him a Sociable Animal, consists not in his desire of Company, Good-nature, Pity, Affability, and other Graces of a fair Outside; but that his vilest and most hateful Qualities are the most necessary Accomplishments to fit him for the largest, and, according to the World, the happiest and most flourishing Societies.

Bernard Baruch

None of us can be free of conflict and woe. Even the greatest men have had to accept disappointments as their daily bread. ... The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

Chad Kroeger

I always thought it was strange when these artists like Kurt Cobain or whoever would get really famous and say, 'I don't understand why this is happening to me.' There is a mathematical formula to why you got famous. It isn't some magical thing that just started happening.

Cassie Ventura

It would be awesome to stay popular, but if I was only an underground artist, I would be okay with that.

Cass McCombs

Making music and art is about expressing something that's universally human, maybe even beyond human, at best.

Cass McCombs

When you're playing festivals, you only get a half-hour. It's like a meat market. You don't get to be artistic. You don't get to play music. It's called a showcase for a reason.

Cass McCombs

Folk art has never been much about politics; it's about action and utility.

Cassandra Peterson

[Vincent Price] had a fish recipe where he wrapped [the fish] in aluminum foil and put in these herbs. And then you put it in the dishwasher and then you wash your dishes, and when you're done, your fish is steamed and it's perfect. But he was very sophisticated as far as art and food and all of that went.

Cass Sunstein

The fear of loss is an engine of horrors, but also a source of the greatest forms of heroism. There's not a lot of art that puts that in bold letters. It's psychologically very interesting and acute, I think. That's not the central reading, I think, of the New Testament.

Carol Kane

People who are interested in the arts and theater are such a minority.