Tyler Cowen Quotes

Music is art to me, and you don't censor art. You don't go into a museum and censor things.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.

Like books and black lives - albums still matter. Tonight and always.

The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.

Flowers lead to books, which lead to thinking and not thinking and then more flowers and music, music. Then many more flowers and many more books.

I'd always wanted to know the difference between a mark that was art and one that wasn't.

In truth, the legitimate contention is, not of one age or school of literary art against another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to form.

Art is - representing the beautiful. There must be Art in everything.

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.

Art functioning as propaganda is not art.

The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.

Art to be art must soothe.

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained.

A life lived for art, is never a life wasted.

Art should create an experience.

Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who've helped me.

Music and movie scripts are books. You want to be literally moved and that's the sort of things I look for.

When I was little I used to wish I could talk to the illustrators because I wanted to discuss something about the books. With so many of the other art forms that children experience, such as movies and television, they don't get to control the pace.

Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.

The arts and humanities teach us who we are and what we can be. They lie at the very core of the culture of which we're a part.

Art does not imitate, but interpret. It searches out the idea lying dormant in the symbol, in order to present the symbol to men in such form as to enable them to penetrate through it to the idea. Were it otherwise, what would be the use or value of art?