Quotes
Quotes about Art
CONSIDERING THE VOID When I behold the charm of evening skies, their lulling endurance; the patterns of stars with names of bears and dogs, a swan, a virgin; other planets that the Voyager showed were like and so unlike our own, with all their diverse moons, bright discs, weird rings, and cratered faces; comets with their streaming tails bent by pressure from our sun; the skyscape of our Milky Way holding in its shimmering disc an infinity of suns (or say a thousand billion); knowing there are holes of darkness gulping mass and even light, knowing that this galaxy of ours is one of multitudes in what we call the heavens, it troubles me. It troubles me. -President Jimmy Carter- (he has written a volume of poetry as well as a novel, The Hornet's Nest, about the Revolutionary War).
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul.".
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth--the true poet is very near the oracle.
To rankling poison hast thou turned in me the milk of human kindness. [Ger., In gahrend Drachengift hast du Die Milch der frommen Denkart mir verwandelt.]
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
Listen! John A. Logan is the Head Centre, the Hub, the King Pin, the Main Spring, Mogul, and Mugwump of the final plot by which partisanship was installed in the Commission.
We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.
Party honesty is party expediency.
The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Politics is the art of preventing people from sticking their noses in things that are properly their business.
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. - "Leadership Is an Art".
The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.
Watergate showed more strengths in our system than weaknesses... The whole country did take part in quite a genuine sense in passing judgment on Richard Nixon.
A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.
The art of creation is older than the art of killing.
Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -and both commonly succeed, and are right.
All that a good government aims at...is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.
