Andre Malraux Quotes

Some Pictures Are In The Gallery Because They Belong To Humanity And Others Because They Belong To The United States.

Opium Teaches Only One Thing, Which Is That Aside From Physical Suffering, There Is Nothing Real.

The Ordinary Man Puts Up A Struggle Against All That Is Not Himself, Whereas It Is Against Himself, In A Limited But All-essential Field, That The Artist Has To Battle.

If Modern Painters Feel Qualms About Applying The Term "masterpiece" To Describe A Work Of Capital Importance, This Is Because It Has Come To Convey A Notion Of Perfection: A Notion That Leads To Much Confusion When Applied To Artists Other Than Those Who Made Perfection Their Ideal.

Every Young Man's Heart Is A Graveyard In Which Are Inscribed The Names Of A Thousand Dead Artists But Whose Only Actual Denizens Are A Few Mighty, Often Antagonistic, Ghosts.

The Present Age Delights In Unearthing A Great Man's Secrets; For One Thing Because We Like To Temper Our Admiration And Also Perhaps We Have A Vague Hope Of Finding A Clue To Genius In Such "revelations."

Chanel, General De Gaulle And Picasso Are The Three Most Important Figures Of Our Time.

An Individualism Which Has Got Beyond The Stage Of Hedonism Tends To Yield To The Lure Of The Grandiose. It Was Not Man, The Individual, Nor Even The Supreme Being, That Robespierre Set Up Against Christ; It Was That Leviathan, The Nation.

In Art, We Are The First Heirs Of All The Earth. . . . Accidents Impair And Time Transforms, But It Is We Who Choose.

The Crucial Discovery Was Made That, In Order To Become Painting, The Universe Seen By The Artist Had To Become A Private One Created By Himself.

Our Characteristic Response To The Mutilated Statue, The Bronze Dug Up From The Earth, Is Revealing. It Is Not That We Prefer Time-worn Bas-reliefs, Or Rusted Statuettes As Such, Nor Is It The Vestiges Of Death That Grip Us In Them, But Those Of Life. Mutilation Is The Scar Left By The Struggle With Time, And A Reminder Of It - Time Which Is As Much A Part Of Ancient Works Of Art As The Material They Are Made Of, And Thrusts Up Through The Fissures, From A Dark Underworld, Where All Is At Once Chaos And Determinism.

Even The West Has Known The Architecture Of Empty Space, Whose Object, For Thousands Of Years, Has Been Less To Construct Divine Houses, Than To Create Sacred Places, To Seize Upon Mystery And To Immerse Man In It-whether By Raising The Cyclopean Pedestal That Surrounds Him With Stars, Or By Hollowing Out The Sanctuary That Wraps Him In Haunted Night.