John F. Kennedy Quotes

High achievements in art, music, etc., are the results of concentration.

The culture of any country is gauged first by its progress in art.

All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed.

There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.

I remind myself Vincent van Gogh died without having sold a single painting. Like, art is not measured by the trappings that people attached to it. It's the thing itself, and so, as you know, it's been a dream of mine to write songs for Disney, and so, it's really exciting to finally hear. It's two and a half years.

The feat of superbly imitating a muscle, as Michelangelo did, or a face, as Raphael did, created neither progress nor a hierarchy in art. Because these artists of the sixteenth century imitated human forms, they were not superior to the artists of the high periods of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indochinese, Roman, and Gothic art who interpreted and stylized form but did not imitate it.

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.

When I started painting 17 years ago, I never imagined that anyone would look at my work or buy my pieces. But now I do about 14 exhibitions each year.

The true test of the progress of a people is to be found in their literature.

I think we're at a really critical time in terms of art, and I think it's totally possible to have a project that is entertaining but also moving the cultural needle forward. I think it's one of the reasons I'm so grateful to work on 'Billions.'

There is no finish line. When you reach one goal, find a new one.

We should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the art.

I wish you to be persuaded that success in your art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry which I principally recommend is not the industry of the hands, but of the mind.

Every accomplishment, every refined talent, every useful attainment in mathematics, music, and in all sciences, and art belong to the Saints.

In literary art, as in the art of the architect, the painter, the musician, signs that the artist is thinking of his own achievement more than of his subject always offend me.

In the world of art, as in the whole of creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives.

In art, progress lies not in an extension, but in a knowledge of limitations.

Progress in art does not consist in reducing limitations, but in knowing them better.

I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.

No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist's consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress.

The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.

The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose

People want to be successful, and they want to be acknowledged for what they do. Sometimes they make really great art and aren't. Historically, the best artists weren't. But their work survived.

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.

Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.