There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.

If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

I feel sure that coups d'état would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.

Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity.

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.

Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum.

We write our deepest thoughts.

You can always hold out for something better when you know your self worth.

Although I am far too frequently convinced otherwise, with God a dead-end is only the death of an end.

Really, I think among the many mistakes I've made over my life, one of them was caring so much about the short story.

Yes, 85 percent of the art you see isn't any good. But everyone has a different opinion about which 85 percent is bad. That in turn creates fantastically unstable interplay and argument.

I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems.

There's nothing in the actual Bible that limits a Christian in their appreciation of or interest in science. Anti-science is purely a function of ignorant fundamentalism.

Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.

Then on to all the terrific american songwriters, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles, from Bob Dylan to Paul Simon. Whoever wrote and sang in the song form I have appreciated.

Machinery may make for efficiency and a standardisation of life, but horse love is a bond of freemasonry which unites the entire race.