Michel Foucault Quotes

What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?

Life is like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning.

The making of one's life into art is, after all, the first duty and privilege of every man.

If you do it properly, life is art, really.

Our life is a work of art. We must seek always to be its artist.

I want my whole life to be a great work of art, not just my art. And that means paying attention to my entire life and trying to make sure my whole life is balanced.

The good life is one that's artistically made.

Treat your life like something to be sculpted.

I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.

Moralists have no place in an art gallery.

The object of art like every other product creates a public which is sensitive to art and enjoys beauty.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

You can make your life into a grand ever-evolving work of art. The key is your thoughts, the wonderous invisible part of you that is your spiritual soul.

Well, I enjoy my life. You know, I think life is an art, and that one has to live it as an art. That's your choice.

Your life is your art.

Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only "liked": it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.

The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.

Beauty is not a means, not a way of furthering a thing in the world. It is a result; it belongs to ordering, to form, to aftereffect.

We worship the aesthetic, but we do not have faith in it.

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world. Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament.

You need the art in order to love the life.

Art is to beauty what honor is to honesty.

Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.