Stendhal Quotes

Condemning art as manipulative is a non sequitur, of course. All art is manipulative.

I believe that true art is universal in its appeal.

Art evokes emotion. It doesn't have to be a thing of beauty.

We need to have a view that culture has a value in itself, not just in terms of a social and economic value.

Art is forever.

For decades engineers have stood accused that their buildings do not have any cultural value. We have attempted to liberate engineering of this accusation.

What lists and awards don't measure - and I feel this strongly - is the lasting value of any work of art. They're a snapshot of a moment, and one should always consider their judgments in that context.

What we value about music and literature are the moments that they create in our minds when we encounter them.

Art should be life. It's an imitation of life. It should have some humanity in it.

Disco deserved a better name, a beautiful name because it was a beautiful art form. It made the consumer beautiful. The consumer was the star.

The value of kitsch exists in its novelty and in its connotations to more legitimate counterparts.

I think we give too much importance to artists talking about the art and the film and the books and the plays and the music - it's done; the material is there. But we talk about it because it's part of the game. I'm comfortable with it.

The challenge is to get everyone to respect music again, to recognize its value.

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?'

The historical importance of a composer does not always go hand in hand with the quality of their work.

The essential argument in the book, 'Art as Therapy,' is that art enjoys such financial and cultural prestige that it's easy to forget the confusion that persists about what it's really for.

I think, in the West, we often discount the arts as nice but not that important. Certainly in America when we cut funding for schools, the arts are the first programs to go. But the arts built the things we need more than anything else: collaboration and co-operation and creativity.

For most of us, art is supposed to do something more than simply mirror the confusions of the world.

I take a keen interest in the architecture of places when I travel.

Some people think that culture is overhyped and peripheral. A season of opera is less important than the refurbishment of a school, they say. Leaving aside the poverty of imagination and aspiration implicit in such a sentiment, it also ignores hardheaded economic reality: Britain, and London in particular, makes big money from culture.

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

I don't think we should be deceived that art is such a moral thing.

The value of the arts cannot be measured by its ability to preserve life but rather to enhance existence.

Good art doesn't really have an expiration date on it.

Establishing the two Eids as official holidays will carry important practical and symbolic significance.