Pablo Picasso Quotes

A painting only lives in the eye of the beholder

I put in my pictures everything I like. So much the worse for the things - they have to get along with one another.

Forcing yourself to use restricted means is the sort of restraint that liberates invention. It obliges you to make a kind of progress that you can't even imagine in advance.

One cannot be a sorcerer all the time. How could one live?

If there is something to steal, I steal it.

I don't develop; I am.

There are more copies than originals among people.

The artist spends the first part of his life with the dead, the second with the living, and the third with himself.

All children paint like geniuses. What do we do to them that so quickly dulls this ability?

People want Art. And they are given it. But the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is.

For my part, I can't do anything else but what I am doing.

There are chemists who spend their whole lives trying to find out what's in a lump of sugar. I want to know one thing. What is color?

The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself.

It's insane how many Roman coins are being found! It's as if all Romans had holes in their pockets. They sowed coins wherever they went. Even in the fields. Maybe to grow money . . .

I must keep on trying, just to keep the experiment going until I get tired of it all. Even if the last result is not necessarily the best, I stop when my interest in the problem wanes.

The only thing that's important is the legend created by the picture, and not whether it continues to exist itself.

If I like it, I say it's mine. If I don't I say it's a fake.

What a trade! Poor painters! They always wish to be understood, and they are analysed instead.

All art is subversive.

I imitate everyone except myself.

We can see the light but we are still inside the tunnel, ... We have not been able to get to all the communities.

We have learned nothing.

The earth doesn't have a housekeeper to do the dusting.

They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.

If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.

When I paint I feel that all the artists of the past are behind me.

I have had no true friends, only lovers.

Painting isn't made for the decoration of apartments; it is a weapon to be used offensively and defensively against the enemy.

Braque always said that the only thing that counts, in painting, is the intention, and it's true. What counts is what one wants to do, and not what one does. That's what's important.

I'm a joker who has understood his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries.

The earth doesn't have a housekeeper to do the dusting. And the dust that falls on it every day remains there. Everything that's come down to us from the past has been conserved by dust.

The revolutionary artist does not only focus on the negative aspects of capitalist lives, but also creates visions of a revolutionary future.

Painting is a jeu d'esprit.

I work with few colors, what creates the illusion of quantity is that they fell in the right place.

I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it.

What other movement determines the S line? Its aesthetic efficacity has long been noted by artists.

Can you imagine me calling myself "Ruiz"? "Pablo Ruiz"? "Diego-José Ruiz"? Or "Juan-Népomucène Ruiz"? I was given I don't know how many names.

For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography

Only when painting isn't painting can there be an affront to modesty.

To be young, really young, takes a very long time.

I have never had time for the idea of searching. Whenever I wanted to express something, I did so without thinking of the past or the future.

I don't seek, I find.

What is conserved in the ground? Stone, bronze, ivory, bone, sometimes pottery. Never wood objects, no fabric or skins. That completely skews our notions about primitive man.

[In developing your potential] ... I don't develop; I am

I understand how you could see something in the root of a tree, a crack in the wall, in an eroded stone or pebble. But marble? It comes off in blocks and doesn't evoke any image. It does not inspire.

The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm.

Even if the painting is green, well then! The 'subject' is the green. There is always a subject; it's a joke to suppress the subject, it's impossible.

The more technique there is, the less there is

I'm not a developer; I am.

I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting.