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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 vision.

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
Either
Spiritual
Art
Measure
Much
Economics
Believe
Significant
Men
Direct
Philosophy
Vision

More quotes by Herbert Read

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Revolt, it will be said, implies violence but this is an outmoded, an incompetent conception of revolt. The most effective form of revolt in this violent world we live in is non-violence.
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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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The great modern heresy in poetry is to confuse the use we make of words in a poem with modalities of speech...For true poetry is never speech but always a song.
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Love works miracles in stillness.
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Man is everywhere still in chains.
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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 first essential for success.
Herbert Read
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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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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, in the course of which the individual is differentiated, made distinct from and independent of the parent group.
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The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol.
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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 take care of themselves.
Herbert Read
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Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past.
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Simplicity is not a goal, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, as one approaches the real meaning of things.
Herbert Read
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I know of no better name than Anarchism.
Herbert Read
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In general, modern art... has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted.
Herbert Read
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Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.
Herbert Read
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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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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.
Herbert Read
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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.
Herbert Read
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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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Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.
Herbert Read