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It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one.

Herbert Read

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Herbert Read
Age: 74 †
Born: 1893
Born: November 4
Died: 1968
Died: June 12
Anarchist
Art Historian
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Muscoates
North Yorkshire
Sir Herbert Edward Read
Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Read
Herbert Edward Read
Society
Socialism
Religion
Twenty
Years
Provide
Twenties
Russia
Already
Revert
Literature
Eugenics
Clear
Gradually

More quotes by Herbert Read

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Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.
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Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.
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To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.
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Great changes in the destiny of mankind can be effected only in the minds of little children.
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Once we become conscious of a feeling and attempt to make a corresponding form, we are engaged in an activity which, far from being sincere, is prepared (as any artist if he is sincere will tell you) to moderate feelings to fit the form. The artist's feeling for form is stronger than a formless feeling.
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In general, modern art... has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted.
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Art is pattern informed by sensibility.
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Art is always the index of social vitality, the moving finger that records the destiny of a civilization. A wise statesman should keep an anxious eye on this graph, for it is more significant than a decline in exports or a fall in the value of a nation's currency.
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Love works miracles in stillness.
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An enormous amount of art and literature is erotic in the sense that it stimulates vague sexual emotions, but it has no pornographic intention or effect because it leaves everything to the imagination. The consumer has to invent his own images, and it is felt, I do not know with what justification, that there is no harm in this.
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The fundamental purpose of the artist is the same as that of a scientist: to state a fact.
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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 necessarily an anarchist, and that he must oppose all organized conceptions of the State, not only those which we inherit from the past, but equally those which are imposed on people in the name of the future.
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The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.
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I know of no better name than Anarchism.
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The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol.
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Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life.
Herbert Read
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Man is everywhere still in chains.
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But all categories of art, idealistic or realistic, surrealistic or constructivist (a new form of idealism) must satisfy a simple test (or they are in no sense works of art): they must persist as objects of contemplation.
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Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past.
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Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.
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