Werner Herzog Quotes

I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated.

If every museum in the New World were emptied, if every famous building in the Old World were destroyed and only Venice saved, there would be enough there to fill a full lifetime with delight. Venice, with all its complexity and variety, is in itself the greatest surviving work of art in the world.

And it's a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody's heritage. It's just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that's everybody's heritage.

To the humblest among them, who may be listening to me now, I want to say that the masterpiece to which you are paying historic homage this evening is a painting which he has saved.

The centuries-old history and culture of India, majestic architectural monuments and museums of Delhi, Agra and Mumbai have a unique attractive force.

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.

History is remembered by its art, not its war machines.

I take the museum space also as sacred in a sense.

As artists, our primary function is not to be educators - but we are at a time in history, where for us, our history needs to give context for stories that we hope to tell down the road.

The arts are so important not only to society but to ourselves as human beings. It keeps in touch with our own humanity. So access to the arts in any way, shape, or form is vital.

I grew up watching American films, listening to American music, and it's a big contribution to the rest of the world. I mean, American jazz, for me, is the best thing culturally that America has produced.

The environment of San Francisco has so much history to it that I really appreciate. Musically, socially, and culturally. There's this new culture of people; it's a crazy place to be.

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

Shiraz' is an important part of our filmmaking and cultural history.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I think it's really important to remake things. If you never remake the classics, no one would know Shakespeare.

So much of the history of painting is the propaganda of self-aggrandizement.

There's no point in us designing synthetic laboratories that could just as well be in Dusseldorf or Helsinki. San Francisco has its light, which must be used.

I love the South Bank: every era of architecture is there, and you can stop, look, and listen.

I'm more inclined towards old churches and dusty museums.

I remember touring the Medici palace in Florence when I was younger and I was entranced by the beauty and elegance of every space.

Kolkata does not look like a Delhi or Mumbai. The city has its identity.

All culture, all important culture, is always linked to how people express and experience being alive.

My work as a whole is about excavating and shining a light on pieces of history that not only need to be seen and heard, but that can also add to the conversation about what's going on now.

It's still amazing, but when I was growing up, Harlem was the Mecca of black culture. I was so inspired by it, the aspirational feeling you'd get spending time there. Experiences that were really specific to that place.

Art is the closest you can get to immortality, though it's a poor substitute - you're working for people not yet born - and people want it because it is brilliant. It ends up in museums anyway; the rich have to give it back to the people, it's their only option. There are no pockets in a shroud.