Kenneth Clark Quotes.
The great achievement of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people.
All great civilizations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.
The great artist takes what he needs.
In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate men.
One musn’t overrate the culture of what used to be called “top people” before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.
A racist system inevitably destroys and damages human beings; it brutalizes and dehumanizes them, blacks and whites alike.
It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.
The dark ghettos are social, political, educational and-above all-economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject peoples, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt, and fear of their masters.
I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible.
All color is no color.
I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven’t changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves.
The recognized achievements of some Negroes, despite rigid racial barriers, indicate that society by its prejudices may be depriving itself of valuable contributions from many others. It is now doubtful whether America can afford the luxury of such a waste of human resources.
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.
The eye instinctively looks for analogies and amplifies them, so that a face imagined in the pattern of a wallpaper may become more vivid than a photograph.
Racial prejudices are indication of a disturbed and potentially unstable society.
I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people’s feelings by satisfying our own egos.
No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow – and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals.
Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.
Pride, like humility, is destroyed by one’s insistence that he possesses it.
A lot of people you think you know you don’t know until you find out you don’t know then it may be too late to know.
We are part of a great whole. All living things are our brothers and sisters.
