Quote

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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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
Desire
Voyage
Artist
Voyages
Back
Persist
Everything
Restless
Must
Brings
Discovery
Afraid
Universe

More quotes by Herbert Read

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Man is everywhere still in chains.
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.
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Art is pattern informed by sensibility.
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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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It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.
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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 space, but it is space itself as a perceived quantity that becomes the peculiar concern of the sculptor. We may say that for the painter space is a luxury for the sculptor it is a necessity.
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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.
Herbert Read
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Perhaps it is this theory of all work and no play that has made the Marxist such a very dull boy.
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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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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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Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.
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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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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The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency.
Herbert Read
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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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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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Poetry is creative expression Prose is constructive expression... by creative I mean original. In Poetry the words are born or reborn in the act of thinking... There is no time interval between the words and the thought when a real poet writes, both of them happen together, and both the thought and the word are Poetry.
Herbert Read
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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.
Herbert Read
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Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.
Herbert Read
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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