Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself. — Kenneth Clark Art Copy Share Image
All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on success in war. — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs. — Kenneth Clark Bombs Copy Share Image
Racial prejudices are indication of a disturbed and potentially unstable society. — Kenneth Clark Civil rights Copy Share Image
We are part of a great whole. All living things are our brothers and sisters. — Kenneth Clark Brother Copy Share Image
You have no idea what portrait painters suffer from the vanity of their sitters. — Kenneth Clark Ideas Copy Share Image
All great civilisations, in their early stages, are based on success in war. — Kenneth Clark Civilisation Copy Share Image
I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible. — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
Sweeping, confident articles on the future seem to me, intellectually, the most disreputable of all forms of public utterance. — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
The Cathedrals were built to the glory of God; New York was built to the glory of Mammon. — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
Only the bad artists of the nineteenth century were frightened by the invention of photography; the good ones all welcomed it and… — Kenneth Clark Art Copy Share Image
Devotion to the facts will always give the pleasures of recognition; adherence to the rules of design, the pleasures of order and… — Kenneth Clark Adherence Copy Share Image
The great achievement of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people. — Kenneth Clark Achievement Copy Share Image
A lot of people you think you know you don't know until you find out you don't know then it may be… — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
Conventional nudes based on classical originals could bear no burden of thought or inner life without losing their formal completeness. — Kenneth Clark Bears Copy Share Image
This became Delacroix 's theme: that the achievements of the spirit all that a great library contained were the result of a… — Kenneth Clark Achievement Copy Share Image
The various parts of the body cannot be perceived as simple units and have no clear relationship to one another. In almost… — Kenneth Clark Art Copy Share Image
I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and… — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
Changes in the structure of society are not brought about solely by massive engines of doctrine. The first flash of insight which… — Kenneth Clark Assumption Copy Share Image
No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the… — Kenneth Clark Abstract Copy Share Image
Ingres was one of those artists to whom the outline was something sacred and magical, and the reason is that it was… — Kenneth Clark Abstraction Copy Share Image
People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like… — Kenneth Clark Alexandria Copy Share Image
We can hardly imagine a state of mind in which all material objects were regarded as symbols of spirtual truths or episodes… — Kenneth Clark Art Copy Share Image
“In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough… — Kenneth Clark Civilization Copy Share Image
“I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole… — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately… — Kenneth Clark Body Copy Share Image
Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression… — Kenneth Clark Animal Copy Share Image
Ruskin's much-derided moral theory of art was part of an attempt to show that this human activity, which we value so highly,… — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
“What happened? It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on… — Kenneth Clark Civilisation Copy Share Image
“At certain epochs, man has felt conscious of something about himself - body and spirit - which was outside the day-to-day struggle… — Kenneth Clark Beauty Copy Share Image
The difference between what we see and a sheet of white paper with a few thin lines on it is very great.… — Kenneth Clark Abstract Copy Share Image
Children who are treated as if they are uneducable almost invariably become uneducable. — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
Pride, like humility, is destroyed by one's insistence that he possesses it. — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
Few people can look at a painting longer than it takes to peel an orange and eat it. — Kenneth Clark Artist Copy Share Image
Energy is eternal delight; and from the earliest times human beings have tried to imprison it in some durable hieroglyphic. It is… — Kenneth Clark Art Copy Share Image
A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one's inner life, is not merely exhausting, it… — Kenneth Clark Copy Share Image
