Harold Prince Quotes

Art shows and the institutions end up being the couriers for culture for the next generation and are an important component as well. It may seem ironic from one perspective, but I think if you look at my overall strategy, it's actually not out of step.

Art is exalted above religion and race. Not a single solitary soul these days believes in the religions of the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Greeks... Only their art, whenever it was beautiful, stands proud and exalted, rising above all time.

Malcolm was a firm believer in the value and importance of our heritage. He believed that we have valuable and distinct cultural traditions which need to be institutionalized so that they can be passed on to our heirs.

I'm baffled when young actors aren't familiar with current film, television and theater, or aren't interested in older films or plays and the history of the craft in general. If you don't know what's out there, and what came before, then how can you picture yourself working, and how can anyone else?

I'm glad Wu-Tang was able to inspire other producers and artists, but I would never want to be erased or removed.

The American dream has always depended on the dialogue between the present and the past. In our architecture, as in all our other arts-indeed, as in our political and social culture as a whole-ours has been a struggle to formulate and sustain a usable past.

I guess art itself is insane. Its actual function is rarely clear, and yet people give their hearts and souls and lives to it, and have for all of history.

In France, in Europe, the young artists of any generation always act as grandsons of some great man - Poussin, for example, or Victor Hugo. They can't help it. Even if they don't believe in that, it gets in their system. And so when they come to produce something of their own, the tradition is nearly indestructible.

Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.

Art has this ability to allow you to connect back through history in the same way that biology does. I'm always looking for source material.

The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.

When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.

To the humblest among them, who may be listening to me now, I want to say that the masterpiece to which you are paying historic homage this evening is a painting which he has saved.

The Smithsonian museums are among this country's most endearing treasures and I look forward to helping maintain and enhance their coveted works of art.

STG and the Ramshorn Theatre are a vital part of Glasgow's rich cultural history. To abandon them now is to abandon not only our past, but our future.

As an actress, I think it's important to look back and realize that we aren't always quite as original as we think we are. There's this grand, textured history for us over the last 100 years of incredible writers, directors, and performers.

Music is part of history, and our history has lessons that cannot be separated from our greatest music.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies - all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

It may not be art, but it is history.

A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.

Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted: it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors.

I like places that have history in the sense of - you feel responsible to it.

A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.