"To draw you must close your eyes and sing."
Pablo Picasso
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
Albert Einstein
"Let us not mince words; the most marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful."
Andre Brenton, 1924
"The creative 'act' is a process, not a moment."
Unknown
"Foundation design is a search, not for the right answers, but for the significant questions."
Unknown
"I feel in my very soul that I was born to be great ... born to do things in which other men have failed. Those men here (Chicago Institute of Art) who call me 'promising' know not the magnitude of the 'promise' which the gods have given in the later hours of the night, when the hum of the city is hushed in the stillness and the winds are dead, and thought and I communicate alone. They know not the greatness that has come upon be at these times, when the mind has leapt beyond the real and soars unrestrained in the mysteries of the infinite."
Thomas Hart Benton
"Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision."
Salvador Dali, Declaration 1929
"It is not the purpose of the ad or commercial to make the reader or listener say, 'My what a clever ad.' It is the purpose of advertising to make the reader say, 'I believe I'll buy one when I'm shopping tomorrow' ..."
Morris Hite
"The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history."
Harold Rosenberg
"The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes."
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"The talent for discovering the unique and marketable characteristics of a product and service is a designer's most valuable asset."
Primo Angeli
"It can't be stressed enough that in order to produce great graphics, you have to have a good product and a good client capable of making decisions."
Primo Angeli
"Every artist clips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures."
Henry Ward Beecher
"Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before."
Edith Warton
"A critic is a legless man who teaches running."
Unknown
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso
"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."
Pablo Picasso
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."
Mark Twain
"My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water."
Mark Twain
"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
Paul Valery
"The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"There is saying among prospectors: 'Go out looking for one thing, and that's all you'll ever find.' "
Robert Flaherty
"Genius ain't nothing more than elegant common sense."
Josh Billings
"When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it."
Pablo Picasso
"Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea."
Lou Dorfsman
"Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies."
Erich Fromm
"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
Naguib Mahfouz
"...I recognize the truth that all interesting, real, and quality things become more piquant and beautiful with vintage. There is not a person alive, if his head isn't up his ass, who doesn't prefer and value the fullness of years.
With rare exception, everybody has experienced youth. Big deal. The most special thing about that is surviving it. But give me someone who practices the wisdom of her learning, who has fought for and protected her loves, who has and will share her own and the experiences of others. Now THAT is someone worth knowing well."
Doug Tennant, About forum member
"Let the designer lean upon the staff of the line—line determinative, line emphatic, line delicate, line expressive, line controlling and uniting."
Walter Crane
"Applied good taste is a mark of good citizenship. Ugliness is a from of anarchy…ugly cities, ugly advertising, ugly lives produce bad citizens."
Lester Beall
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand."
Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)
"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."
Albert Einstein
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Albert Einstein
"There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules, but there¹s one little rub. They forget that advertising is persuasion, and persuasion is not a science, but an art. Advertising is the art of persuasion."
William Bernbach, quoted in Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers, 1984, New York: Vintage Books, p. 257
"If it doesn¹t sell, it¹s isn¹t creative."
David Oglivy
"There is no such thing as a Mass Mind. The Mass Audience is made up of individuals, and good advertising is written always from one person to another. When it is aimed at millions it rarely moves anyone."
Fairfax Cone, of Foot Cone & Belding, quoted in John O¹Toole, The Trouble with AdvertisingŠ, 1981, New York: Chelsea House, p. 48
"Advertising is salesmanship mass produced. No one would bother to use advertising if he could talk to all his prospects face-to-face. But he can¹t."
Morris Hite, quoted in Adman: Morris Hite¹s Methods for Winning the Ad Game, 1988, Dallas, TX: E-Heart Press, p. 203
"Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomedŠbut dull?"
William Bernbach, 1989, DDB Needham Worldwide
"Advertising doesn¹t create a product advantage. It can only convey it."
William Bernbach, 1989, DDB Needham Worldwide
"On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar."
David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1971, New York: Ballantine Books, p. 92
"When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, buy you won¹t com up with a handful of mud either."
Leo Burnett (Originated by John W. Craford), quoted by Joan Kufrin, Leo Burnett: Star Reacher, 1995, Chicago, IL: Leo Burnett Company, Inc., p. 52
I can see beauty where others see ugliness. That either makes me an artist, or a person of very poor taste.
Anon
What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; that is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Theory into Practice
