Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.

There is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom insight and life of each person who has known and loved it.

There is a connection between me and the collectors, and as admirers of the work they tell me about the differences the pieces are able to make in their lives on a daily basis.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

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

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

The claims I'm making for art are simply the claims that we naturally make around music or around poetry. We're much more relaxed around those art forms. We're willing to ask, 'How could this find a place in my heart?'

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

I still hope that more people can create art, even though artistic genres may never be the most popular or money-making genres. But the thing is, I think art is more long-lasting. It stays in people, and it changes them.

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.

Art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. It's about reasserting our firsthand experience in present time.

I believe all painting and art should be uplifting for the viewer.

The proper response to a great work of art is to enter it as though there were nothing else in the world.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

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

All great art ... creates in the beholder not self-satisfacti on but wonder and awe. Its great liberation is to lift us out of ourselves.

Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.

What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.

Nothing is as uplifting as standing before a great painting whether it was painted in 1505 or last Tuesday.

I don't have any particular wish to be polemical or didactic; I don't have a 'message', but what I do thoroughly enjoy are those works of art, not necessarily in the cinema, but in the other arts as well, which have an encyclopaedic world.

Art is the great stimulus to life.

A good piece of art should make a revolution inside you.

There's no connection between consumption of art and moral stamina at all.