Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark OM CH KCB FBAwas a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians and aesthetes of his generation, writing a series of books that appealed to a wide public, while remaining a serious scholar. In 1969, he achieved international fame as the writer, producer and presenter of the BBC Television series Civilisation, which pioneered television documentary series combining expert personalized narration with lavish photography on location...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 July 1903
People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilization. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilization; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater.
Few people can look at a painting longer than it takes to peel an orange and eat it.
The great achievement of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people.
A lot of people you think you know you don't know until you find out you don't know then it may be too late to know.
People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater.
One musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.
Ruthless, greedy, tyrannical, disreputable they have had one principle worth all the rest, the principle of delight!
We must return the party to a more balanced position on Europe that can sensibly embrace a broad range of views,
William will carry on in his job is my personal prediction. But I don't think it's sensible at all to talk about these things.
To say that our troops are simply doing security patrols tells only half the story. They are helping residents recover belongings and they are reporting their concerns and needs to the appropriate authorities.
All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.
In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate men.
Our universe cannot even be stated symbolically. And this touches us all more directly than one might suppose. For example, artists, who have been very little influenced by social systems, have always responded instinctively to latent assumptions about the shape of the universe. The incomprehensibility of our new cosmos seems to me, ultimately, to be the reason for the chaos of modern art.
Those who wish, in the interest of morality, to reduce Leonardo, that inexhaustible source of creative power, to a neutral or sexless agency, have a strange idea of doing service to his reputation.