Isidor Rabi Quotes

I can weep pretty easily. I can get tears in my eyes from a beautiful work of art.

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

I have generally found that persons who had studied painting least were the best judges of it.

Art is interesting because there can be so many different perspectives in a piece of art. The way I see it may be completely different than the way somebody else sees it. It's interesting to hear what somebody sees in a piece of art compared to somebody else. It could be completely different, and that's interesting to me.

It's hard to explain your emotions when you see a work of art.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.

All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.

People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

There is none of that feeling about art that you meet everywhere in Europe. There you will hear people say, 'Oh, you must see such-and-such a statue at 4 o'clock in the afternoon; then the light is beautiful,' or, 'See this monument in the early morning; the light is best for it then.' Do you ever hear anything like that from an American?

The apprehension of... values is intuitive; but it is not a built-in intuition, not something with which one is born. Intuition in art is actually the result of... prolonged tuition.

I certainly consider a great appreciation of painting to be the best indication of a most perfect mind.

The object of art like every other product creates a public which is sensitive to art and enjoys beauty.

The costs of an ignorance of science are nor just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures, and a unilateral disarmament in national competitiveness. There is a moral cost as well. It is an astonishing fact about our species that we understand so much about the history of the universe. the forces that make it tick, the stuff it's made of; the origin of living things, and the machinery of life. A failure to nurture this knowledge shows a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements humanity is capable of; like allowing a great work of art to molder in a warehouse.

I don't know if it's art, but I know I like it.

Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.

Nobody is fully alive who cannot apply to art as much discrimination and appreciation as he applies to the work by which he earns his living.

The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.

We don't all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even 'Little Red Riding Hood.' The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

We worship the aesthetic, but we do not have faith in it.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.

One can do good things without being very much of a harmonist or a colourist. It is sufficient to have a sense of art - and this sense is doubtless the horror of the bourgeois.

Spending money on art has always been frowned upon in this country - even earlier, when my and others' paintings cost almost nothing. Something is always more important. The people in charge are always peddling reasons that others seem to accept. Those who don't drink and aren't crazy, or who don't attract attention with how they behave in public, aren't noticed in art.