It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. I have sometimes heard painters say that they paint 'for themselves': but I think they would soon have painted their fill if they lived on a desert island. The primary purpose of all art forms, whether it's music, literature, or the visual arts, is to say something to the outside world; in other words, to make a personal thought, a striking idea, an inner emotion perceptible to other people's senses in such a way that there is no uncertainty about the maker's intentions.
M. C. EscherRelated topics
art believe bottom desert fill human idea music nature outside paint perceptible primary purpose something tell thought visual way wordsRelated quotes
[I]magination... is the faculty... the common root from which science and literature... spring and grow and flourish together. ...the great ages of science are the great ages of all the arts... [P]owerful minds have taken fire from one another... without asking... to tie their imagination to falling balls or a haunted island. ...When Galileo was looking through his telescope at the moon, Shakespeare was writing The Tempest and all Europe was in ferment, from Johannes Kepler to Peter Paul Rubens, and from the first table of logarithms by John Napier to the Authorized version of the Bible.
Jacob Bronowski
If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that-in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play.
Steven Weinberg
Some students of philosophy have unreasonably high expectations of the subject. They expect it to provide them with a complete and detailed picture of the human predicament. They think that philosophy will reveal to them the meaning of life, and explain to them every facet of our complex existences. Now, although studying philosophy can illuminate fundamental questions about our lives, it does not provide anything like a complete picture, if indeed there could be such a thing. Studying philosophy isn't an alternative to studying art, literature, history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, politics, and science.
Nigel Warburton
Steal music from napster while you have the chance. find free porn on the internet. sneak across the border into mexico just for the irony. how come every one on the internet is "hot"? tell your parents the truth. start your own army. adopt a dog. tell your children the truth. stop complaining and go out and do something about it. jump out of a fucking plane. stop reading this crap right now. don't listen to me. i don't have any answers and i stole the questions from someone else. read a good book. dont beat yourself up. question authority but don't forget to do what your told. turn off your computer right now and go outside and let people into your life.
Jared Leto
The clerical work is par for the course. "Keep on file in numerical order" means throw in wastebasket. You'll soon learn the language. "Let it be a challenge to you" means you're stuck with it; "interpersonal relationships" is a fight between kids; "ancillary civic agencies for supportive discipline" means call the cops; "Language Arts Dept." is the English office; "literature based on child's reading level and experiential background" means that's all they've got in the Book Room; "non-academic-minded" is a delinquent; and "It has come to my attention" means you're in trouble.
Bel Kaufman