All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

The United States fully accepts the profound truth that our own progress, prosperity, and peace are interlocked with the progress, prosperity, and peace of all humanity.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don’t know what that is; I don’t think too much about that.

Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.

The dinosaurs aren’t remembered for much more than their bones. When humanity’s gone, what do we give to this little planet that we’re on, and what could we do collectively, removing the pride?

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

The artist in me cries out for design.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

I like to work with artists from around the world. There are so many new inspiring filmmakers.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.

Many novice real estate investors soon quit the profession and invest in a well-diversified portfolio of bonds. That’s because, when you invest in real estate, you often see a side of humanity that stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and saving money shelter you from.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

The ‚Third World‘ is a term I don’t like very much because we’re all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Streaming is a really big market for me. We’ve been doing great in the streaming market, so it’s not something I want to alienate at all. Streaming counts now. They’re treating artists the way we deserve to be treated.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.