Quote

Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts.

Andre Breton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Andre Breton
Age: 70 †
Born: 1896
Born: February 18
Died: 1966
Died: September 28
Art Theorist
Drawer
Essayist
Novelist
Photographer
Poet
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Andre Breton
D'André Breton
Andre Breto
René Dobrant
Men
States
Push
Revolts
Like
Reason
Acts
Frightful
Need
Whenever
Surrealism
Needs
Allow
Forsake
Much
Drug
Devote
Every
State
Revolt
Mind
Certain
Drugs
Believe
Doe
Creates

More quotes by Andre Breton

Image
There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.
Andre Breton
Image
Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principle problems of life.
Andre Breton
Image
At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful.
Andre Breton
Image
I maintain that anyone who still refuses to see, for instance, a horse galloping on a tomato, must be an idiot. A tomato is also a child's balloon - Surrealism, again, having suppressed the word like.
Andre Breton
Image
It is more or less a given that nothing is less favorable to clairvoyance than the bright sun: physical light and mental light coexist on very poor terms.
Andre Breton
Image
Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.
Andre Breton
Image
Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose.
Andre Breton
Image
Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.
Andre Breton
Image
There is By my leaning over the precipice Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion My finding the secret Of loving you Always for the first time
Andre Breton
Image
There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life’s meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work.
Andre Breton
Image
Humor (is) the process that allows one to brush reality aside when it gets too distressing.
Andre Breton
Image
It will in the end, be admitted that everything, in effect is an image and that the least object which has no symbolic role assigned to it is capable of standing for absolutely anything.
Andre Breton
Image
I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors I will not go looking for keys.
Andre Breton
Image
My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.
Andre Breton
Image
The imaginary is what tends to become real.
Andre Breton
Image
If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable.
Andre Breton
Image
It is the whole modern concept of love which should be re-examined, such as is commonly but transparently expressed in phrases like 'love at first sight' and 'honeymoon'. All this shoddy terminology is on top of that tainted with the most reactionary irony.
Andre Breton
Image
Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
Andre Breton
Image
All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.
Andre Breton
Image
One can understand why Surrealism was not afraid to make for itself a tenet of total revolt, complete insubordination, of sabotage according to rule, and why it still expects nothing save from violence.
Andre Breton