Art Quotes

Beauty, expression, and the human need to create. Artists and thinkers on why art matters.

21093 quotes

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"The aesthetic dimension of life is not supplementary but fundamental to existence."
Félix Guattari
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"Aesthetic creation is a way of resisting the capture of life by instrumental rationality."
Félix Guattari
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"Cinema is a machine for making us think about time itself"
Gilles Deleuze
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"Sense is not meaning but an event"
Gilles Deleuze
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"The minor language stutters, repeating the major in a new way"
Gilles Deleuze
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"Art is the creation of new sensory possibilities"
Gilles Deleuze
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"Art is the arena where the inexpressible becomes expressible, where silence finds its voice."
Giorgio Agamben
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"Gestures are not signs; they are the exposure of human meaning in its most pure form."
Giorgio Agamben
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"Art whispers what politics screams."
Giorgio Agamben
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"Art's value lies precisely in its uselessness in a capitalist system."
Slavoj Žižek
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"Cinema functions as a laboratory for understanding consciousness itself."
Slavoj Žižek
J
"Literature survives all contexts because it resists final interpretation."
Jacques Derrida
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"The signature cannot be wholly repeated; each inscription is singular."
Jacques Derrida
J
"Culture provides the interpretive resources for meaning-making"
Jürgen Habermas
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"Art breaks through the instrumentalization of life"
Jürgen Habermas
J
"Art reminds us of what instrumental rationality excludes"
Jürgen Habermas
J
"Art offers a pathway to meaning not reducible to concepts"
Jürgen Habermas
S
"Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed."
Slavoj Žižek
S
"The real obscenity is not what we hide but what we openly display."
Slavoj Žižek
S
"Art's purpose is to make the familiar seem utterly alien."
Slavoj Žižek
S
"The perfect film is one that makes you forget you're watching propaganda."
Slavoj Žižek
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"Art is the practice of freedom."
Félix Guattari
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"The minor use of language creates new possibilities."
Félix Guattari
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"Ritournelle shapes reality more than reality shapes ritual."
Félix Guattari
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"Intensity matters more than representation."
Félix Guattari
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"Process trumps product in creative work."
Félix Guattari
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"Language is a deterritorialized flow."
Félix Guattari
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"The event exceeds representation."
Félix Guattari
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"Art is what makes life worth living."
Félix Guattari
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"Art is the memory of better things than reality can achieve."
Max Horkheimer