Once kitsch is interpreted ironically, it ceases to be kitsch

Dumbing down takes many forms: art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after all, is really about you.

The arts, like language, emerged spontaneously and universally in similar forms across cultures, employing imaginative and intellectual capacities that had clear survival value.

Why do humans make art? It's how we evolved.

I try to figure out - intellectually, philosophically, psychologically - what the experience of beauty is.

The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.

Beauty is nature’s way of acting at a distance.

Salvador Dali has been called kitsch, but, although some of this work may be grotesque, its brazenly self-conscious bad taste saves it from being true kitsch, which always strives to please.

Solemnity and a complete absence of irony also mark kitsch.

It's a grave mistake in publishing, whether you're talking about Internet or print publication, to try to play to a limited repertoire of established reader interests.

Just as mental toughness and physical energy are the primary traits of an army, they also mark God's beautiful woman.

Before I was married to Martin and became a King, I was a proud Scott, shaped by my mother's discernment and my father's strength.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

If you're crazy enough to do what you love for a living, then you're bound to create a life that matters.

For war there is always enough. It's peace that's expensive.

A sponge sees everything? A sponge sees nothing.

(American swimmer, 1972 Summer Olympics, on winning seven gold medals Inspirational) I swam my brains out.

Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.

If you want to reach every person in the audience, it's not about being bigger, it's about going deeper.

The centuries will burn rich loads With which we groaned, Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids, While songs are crooned: But they will not dream of us poor lads, Left in the ground.