Brian Eno Quotes

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

The price of a work of art has nothing to do with what the work of art is, can do, or is worth on an existential, alchemical level.

Perhaps the world of art is just one vast pretence, in which we all take part since, after all, there is no real cost to it, except to those like Charles Saatchi, rich enough to splash out on junk?

There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.

Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That's the only way we can talk about paintings in this century.

High among the unpredictable variables that endanger the survival of worthy buildings are the vagaries of taste.

Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time.

Music is essentially useless, as is life.

I haven't been in the Louvre for twenty years. It doesn't interest me because I have these doubts about the value of the judgments which decided that all these pictures should be presented to the Louvre instead of others which weren't even considered.

The educator and the public need to have an opportunity to discuss why certain art is important.

A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies - all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.

Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.

The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at the heart of the cultural elite, who contend that it's not a pill, that it shouldn't be asked to perform some specific function, especially something as egocentric as to 'cheer you up' or to 'make you a more empathetic person.'

The modern world thinks of art as very important: something close to the meaning of life.

Bring the arts back, and treat it with respect.

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.

You can't argue that you have to have art, and prove it to anybody. Why should I give $1,000 to art when there are people starving? Of course, that's true. But just because you can't, theoretically, defend the arts, or make a sensible argument for their preservation, doesn't mean they're not important.

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

A lot of people are intimated by art, but it's something to be revered beyond criticism.

In Europe they understand that the arts are incredibly important both culturally and economically.

One of the upsides of tourism is that people begin to take themselves a little more seriously (and think their) culture is worth something. So rather than disparaging the local culture, they vitalize it.

I do think things like old furniture and art are arbitrarily assigned. And I say that coming from an uneducated place in terms of, you know... art... curating. But who's to say what's valuable and what's not? I guess I feel like in the end it's all pretty meaningless 'cause we're all going to die.

A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books appear almost accidentally, like a sudden surge in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are a part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy.

Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is still in print. They're debating right now over Mark Twain. He's still available. Winslow Homer can still be seen. Our arts are - they're there. We got to go get them and understand that this is an important legacy for our country.

[ My time and our common culture] it's what I'm photographing, and I'm very involved with that.