Herbert Read Quotes

66 quotes in 965 categories

• You might think that it would he the natural desire of every man to develop as an independent personality, but this does not seem to…
• It was play rather than work which enabled man to evolve his higher faculties - everything we mean by the word 'culture'.
• Perhaps it is this theory of all work and no play that has made the Marxist such a very dull boy.
• Great changes in the destiny of mankind can be effected only in the minds of little children.
• Simplicity is not a goal, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, as one approaches the real meaning of things.
• The modern artist, by nature and destiny, is always an individualist.
• Man is everywhere still in chains.
• Modern man has been in search of a new language of form to satisfy new longings and aspirations - longings for mental appeasement, aspirations to…
• It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be…
• Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past.
• Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.
• My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as…
• The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair.
• The greatest intensification of the horrors of war is a direct result of the democratisation of the State. So long as the army was a…
• The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol.
• That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual…
• Love works miracles in stillness.
• The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough.
• I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration.
• In order to create it is necessary to destroy; and the agent of destruction in society is the poet. I believe that the poet is…

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