Richard Dreyfuss Quotes

I think that a society lives or dies according to its respect for - for its art.

Queen Victoria did not regard art, letters, or music as in any way springing from national character: they were something quite apart, elegant decorations resembling a scarf or a bracelet, and in no way expressive of the soul of the country.

I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.

We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.

I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.

Quality is timeless: It will clearly define itself. And so I make reference to and acknowledge things that I feel have been dismissed, trying to restate those musical and cultural elements clearly and vehemently.

We say arts education is good for general education, but that's not the point. The arts are what great nations are remembered for. They are a mirror.

I think it would be bad for culture and the art if artists and people who develop the apparatus to support those artists don't get paid.

When the culture dies, the country dies.

Art is a nation's most precious heritage, for it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others, the inner vision which guides us as a nation.

Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.

I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us.

Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture, and the people.

Our position is extremely perilous; if we do not earnestly promote nationalism and weld together our four hundred millions into a strong nation, we face a tragedy - the loss of our country and the destruction of our race. To ward off this danger, we must espouse nationalism and employ the national spirit to save the country.

I was raised with the idea that the arts were a doss - but the arts are vital. If you see Mark Rylance perform Shakespeare at the Globe, you know it's a spiritual act.

The National Gallery is the place that means to represent everything that's good and important in art and show what it believes everyone who is a citizen should recognize and engage.

I believe that the arts of a culture are terribly important and yet almost indefensible.

To me, spending millions of dollars recreating the world's sadness with actors and props and sets - it seems like a kind of arrogant waste of money... Unless, that is, it's a film about an historical event.

I think that there's a difference between being an entertainer and being an artist.

I can't think of anything outside of having the gift yourself and creating yourself. I can't think of the next better thing to do than being able to put it back. Creative expression, I think, is vital to the success of any society.... A society without art will die.

It doesn't matter that your painting is small. Kopecks are also small, but when a lot are put together they make a ruble. Each painting displayed in a gallery and each good book that makes it into a library, no matter how small they may be, serve a great cause: accretion of the national wealth.

The life of the arts is far from an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose-and is a test of the quality of a nations' civilization.

Everything about art has become problematic; its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist.

In Europe they understand that the arts are incredibly important both culturally and economically.

The arts are not a luxury. They are an integral part of our lives as individuals and as a nation.