Herbert Read Quotes

66 quotes in 965 categories

• But the further step, by means of which a civilization is given its quality or culture, is only attained by a process of cellular division,…
• Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.
• I know of no better name than Anarchism.
• In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence.
• The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to…
• There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism,…
• Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines. Only such people will so contrive and control those machines that their…
• Art is an indecent exposure of the consciousness.
• Art in its widest sense is the extension of the personality: a host of artificial limbs.
• Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.
• If we persist in our restless desire to know everything about the universe and ourselves, then we must not be afraid of what the artist…
• Intellect begins with the observation of nature, proceeds to memorize and classify the facts thus observed, and by logical deduction builds up that edifice of…
• In general, modern art... has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted.
• Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Morality seeks to restrain…
• The depths modern art has been exploring are mysterious depths, full of strange fish...
• The fundamental purpose of the artist is the same as that of a scientist: to state a fact.
• Sensibility... is a direct and particular reaction to the separate and individual nature of things. It begins and ends with the sensuous apprehension of colour,…
• The peculiarity of sculpture is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space. Painting may strive to give on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of…
• Spontaneity is not enough - or, to be more exact, spontaneity is not possible until there is an unconscious coordination of form, space and vision.
• The classicist, and the naturalist who has much in common with him, refuse to see in the highest works of art anything but the exercise…

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