Albert Camus Quotes

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

No matter how hard I tried to popularize, I never cheapened a great work of art.

I feel that the arts have an impact in a way that just makes the world more beautiful.

Not all art is great; most of it's rubbish.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

We do not judge great art. It judges us.

I don't think there's any formula for what makes great art.

Great art should be shown with great excitement.

We all agree now - by 'we' I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.

A great painting is a great painting.

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 ultimate luxury good, but one that can make you think, give a you a blast of beauty and enhance your life. Even if the work's made of plasticine.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

I think the problem is when people hear 'arts education,' they think, 'I don't want my son to be some painter that's going to be hanging in some museum after he dies. I don't want my daughter to be a struggling artist making no money.' People don't realize it's more than that. It's beautiful. It brings beauty to our lives.

A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

The morality of art is in its very beauty.

It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.

It seems this is an age of clever critics who keep bewailing the fact that there are no works worthy of criticism.

The arts help complete a person. I truly believe that.

A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness.

Once people write criticism about something - and even in 1967 I was far from alone - they're assuming it's art, and art is supposed to last.

You can't argue that you have to have art, and prove it to anybody. Why should I give $1,000 to art when there are people starving? Of course, that's true. But just because you can't, theoretically, defend the arts, or make a sensible argument for their preservation, doesn't mean they're not important.

We love high-end art, but when you're looking at high-end art in music, a lot of the time, it's appreciated academically, but you can't feel it as much.

Art is subjective and, as an artiste, if our artistic work is not appreciated by the majority, it hurts.