Art Quotes

Art refuses to sit still or be easily defined, and the best quotes about it do the same. Here you will find painters, sculptors, musicians, and writers wrestling with creativity, beauty, meaning, and the maddening gap between what you imagine and what you manage to make.

“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”

Oscar Wilde

More Art Quotes

“The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.”

Voltaire

“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.”

Paul Cezanne

“Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise.”

Christian Bale

“Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.”

Ani DiFranco

“I don't think there is such a thing as being too raunchy when it comes to the art form of burlesque.”

Christina Aguilera

“Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.”

James Wolcott

“I think an artist's responsibility is more complex than people realize.”

Jodie Foster

“I'm enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.”

Steve Martin

“I just wish the crowd I was associated with was more passionate about what they were doing and less consumed with the commerce of the art form.”

Shia LaBeouf

“I just like art. I get pure pleasure from it. I have a lot of wonderful paintings, and every time I look at them I see something different.”

Jack Nicholson

“Be slow to fall into friendship but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”

Socrates

“The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.”

Gustave Flaubert

“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”

H. L. Mencken

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