Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Only lawyers and painters can turn white to black.

Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.

I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

A half-truth is usually less than half of that.

Lying is a widespread habit among the Arabs and they have a low idea of truth.... The Arab has no scruples about lying if by it he obtains his objective.... He is more interested in feeling than facts, in conveying an impression than in giving a report.

Sometimes it is necessary to make things clearer than the truth.

He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

Of all newspaper presses, I never heard anyone deny that the American is the worst.... [N]othing is easier than to make the people know only one side of a question; few things are easier than to keep them altogether from the knowledge of any particular affair; and, worse than all, on them [the American people] may easily be practiced the discovery that lies may work their intended effect, before the truth can overtake them. It is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true or the suppression of things that are.

It is perhaps being economical with the truth.

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.

There’s dramatic license, which is necessary or nothing’s fun, and historical truth, which is necessary or nothing’s understood.

The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.

The radio has so many rules, and songs don't. You don't necessarily write to a rule book unless you're, like, just doing it professionally, which has never been my thing.

I know it's a bit of an awful thing to say, but I really just make things up. My main goal is to make a picture that people find interesting to look at and that has my name on it.

A lot of rappers lie about who and what they are.

I'm the worst liar alive.

I love this freedom that has been given to me as an artist to express myself.

I've seen situations where I think comics are really unrealistic about what creative expression and what the artistic freedom, what that entails.

We are so grateful we are given the chance and the freedom to do what we want, what we want to create, what's on our mind, and that's honestly what we asked for in the beginning of our career.

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we're made.

Painters and poets have equal license in regard to everything.

If we pretend to respect the artist at all we must allow him his freedom of choice , in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify.