Arthur Boyd Quotes
I think it would be better if nobody owned anything, but they didn't starve. Had enough paint and enough pianos and everything else.
Boyd, Arthur. Interview with Robin Hughes. Australian Biography, Film Australia, 1994.
Miller was the first Black American admitted to a Graduate Program—Johns Hopkins—in Mathematics
Spinoza was one of the most feared intellectuals in human history—feared, that is, by the established power structures. He is the only known person who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims—all were forbidden to read his works. He was the enemy of authority and advocated personal reason as the guide for men.
This quotation illustrates a very interesting historical fact about white understanding of Native American concepts of property and ownership. Here is a Scottsman before the American Revolution who is writing about American Indians and their communal concept of property. The “purchases” of Indian land from individual Indians therefore has even more doubt cast on the propriety than if the whites were acting in good faith. Furguson had personally visited North America for a brief visit.
This is a fascinating quotation in that Cooper was a strong patriot of the American system. Today, this statement would be considered un-American and communistic. The notion that each person had a right to a share of land ownership. America changed in this respect. In Cooper’s day, there was so much land and so few people that it was part of the American concept that each man should have land. (Free men and not slaves of course). But as the population grew, speculators realized that there was opportunity and today in America ALL LAND is owned by people, corporations, other organizations and the government. The population is still growing and the potable water is in shorter and shorter supply. Already, we have to pay for water in much of the country. Perhaps in years to come, someone who argues that each person is entitled to clean air to breathe might be thought of as a radical communist.
Arthur Merric Bloomfield Boyd AC OBE was a leading Australian painter of the middle to late 20th century. Boyd's work ranges from impressionist renderings of Australian landscape to starkly expressionist figuration, and many canvases feature both. Several famous works set Biblical stories against the Australian landscape, such as The Expulsion (1947–48), now at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Having a strong social conscience, Boyd's work deals with humanitarian issues and universal themes of love, loss and shame.
