34 Inspiring Quotes About Art

Art is a universal language that transcends cultural boundaries, connecting us to our shared humanity through vivid expressions of creativity and emotion. It has the power to inspire, provoke thought, and evoke deep emotions, allowing us to see the world from new perspectives. In this collection, we've gathered 34 of the most inspiring quotes about art from artists, thinkers, and visionaries who have found profound meaning and purpose through artistic expression. Whether you are an artist seeking motivation or a lover of art searching for inspiration, these words will resonate with you, igniting your passion and appreciation for the transformative power of art.

1. “If it were customary to send little girls to school and teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences.” - Christine de Pizan

2. “Many native traditions held clowns and tricksters as essential to any contact with the sacred. People could not pray until they had laughed, because laughter opens and frees from rigid preconception. Humans had to have tricksters within the most sacred ceremonies for fear that they forget the sacred comes through upset, reversal, surprise. The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth.” - Byrd Gibbens

3. “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.” - Albert Einstein

4. “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” - Charles Darwin

5. “Give a poet a pen” - A. Jarrell Hayes

6. “Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.” - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

7. “The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.” - John Stuart Mill

8. “I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.” - O. Henry

9. “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.” - Virginia Woolf

10. “I had brought from Paris the national prejudice against Italian music; but I had also received from nature that acute sensibility against which prejudices are powerless. I soon contracted the passion it inspires in all those born to understand it.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau

11. “I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how tobecome a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt yourparents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you cando is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestitehermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you'vebeen to college.” - Kurt Vonnegut

12. “Ah, but is it not the mind that is the real grace of Homo sapiens? All the things to think about! All the things to read and appreciate! All the arts! All the things of the spirit!” - Carol Emshwiller

13. “Since art is considered a noble field, art should be used to promote all that is good and noble, and in a noble fashion.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

14. “You can’t enjoy art or books in a hurry.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

15. “Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!” - Robert A. Heinlein

16. “Whenever an art form loses its fire, when it gets weakened by intellectual inbreeding and first principles fade into stale tradition, a radical fringe eventually appears to blow it up and rebuild from the rubble. Young Gun ultrarunners were like Lost Generation writers in the ’20s, Beat poets in the ’50s, and rock musicians in the ’60s: they were poor and ignored and free from all expectations and inhibitions. They were body artists, playing with the palette of human endurance.” - Christopher McDougall

17. “Ignore all hatred and criticism. Live for what you create, and die protecting it.” - Lady Gaga

18. “Maybe it's the fact the most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip - and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendant horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete.” - David Foster Wallace

19. “Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.” - Francisco de Goya

20. “There has to be a cut-off somewhere between the freedom of expression and a graphically explicit free-for-all.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

21. “Righteous, I like that. Kinda fitting when you think about it. If we danced and shared music, we'd be too busy en-joy-in' life to start a war.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

22. “Who among us has not suddenly looked into his child's face, in the midst of the toils and troubles of everyday life, and at that moment "seen" that everything which is good, is loved and lovable, loved by God! Such certainties all mean, at bottom, one and the same thing: that the world is plumb and sound; that everything comes to its appointed goal; that in spite of all appearances, underlying all things is - peace, salvation, gloria; that nothing and no one is lost; that "God holds in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all that is." Such nonrational, intuitive certainties of the divine base of all that is can be vouchsafed to our gaze even when it is turned toward the most insignificant-looking things, if only it is a gaze inspired by love. That, in the precise sense, is contemplation...Out of this kind of contemplation of the created world arise in never-ending wealth all true poetry and all real art, for it is the nature of poetry and art to be paean and praise heard above all the wails of lamentation. No one who is not capable of such contemplation can grasp poetry in a poetic fashion, that is to say, in the only meaningful fashion. The indispensability, the vital function of the arts in man's life, consists above all in this: that through them contemplation of the created world is kept alive and active.” - Josef Pieper

23. “Giving Back reframes portraits of philanthropy.” - Valaida Fullwood

24. “If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.” - Honoré de Balzac

25. “We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe” - Ray Bradbury

26. “I’m convinced that the arts could be something of a higher power.” - Veronika Carnaby

27. “It's quite simple. I just don't feel right without a pen in my hand denting a hole through my notepad.” - Veronika Carnaby

28. “Many people don’t realize the connection between music and literature and I’m here to tell them that it does exist!” - Veronika Carnaby

29. “I don’t want to re-write the same old book with the same tired techniques. I’d rather bring something new to the table that’s true to me and that people will have a genuine reaction to. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” - Veronika Carnaby

30. “She preferred the quiet solitary atmosphere, to create in her own world of paint and colour, the thrill of anticipating how her works would turn out as she eyed the blank sheets of paper or canvas before starting her next masterpiece. How satisfying it was to mess around in paint gear, without having to worry about spills, starch or frills, that was the life!” - E.A. Bucchianeri

31. “Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.” - Damien Hirst

32. “Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

33. “The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.” - Charles Darwin

34. “The purpose of art is to give the traveling human race an improved map that shows the way to itself. If art isn't for *that*, what is it for?” - William Saroyan