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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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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
Left
Spirit
Care
Ugliness
Human
Activities
Humans
Believed
Take
Sin
Activity

More quotes by Herbert Read

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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 brings back from his voyage of discovery.
Herbert Read
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Art is pattern informed by sensibility.
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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.
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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.
Herbert Read
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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.
Herbert Read
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The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word.
Herbert Read
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Nobody seriously believes in the social philosophies of the immediate past.
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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.
Herbert Read
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Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.
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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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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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.
Herbert Read
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Man is everywhere still in chains.
Herbert Read
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The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol.
Herbert Read
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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.
Herbert Read
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Love works miracles in stillness.
Herbert Read
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Great changes in the destiny of mankind can be effected only in the minds of little children.
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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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.
Herbert Read
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The fundamental purpose of the artist is the same as that of a scientist: to state a fact.
Herbert Read