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Our Characteristic Response To The Mutilated Statue, The Bronze Dug Up From The Earth, Is Revealing. It Is Not That We Prefer Time-worn Bas-reliefs, Or Rusted Statuettes As Such, Nor Is It The Vestiges Of Death That Grip Us In Them, But Those Of Life. Mutilation Is The Scar Left By The Struggle With Time, And A Reminder Of It - Time Which Is As Much A Part Of Ancient Works Of Art As The Material They Are Made Of, And Thrusts Up Through The Fissures, From A Dark Underworld, Where All Is At Once Chaos And Determinism.

-Andre Malraux

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Our Characteristic Response To

Andre Malraux

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Our Characteristic Response To The Mutilated Statue, The Bronze Dug Up From The Earth, Is Revealing. It Is Not That We Prefer Time-worn Bas-reliefs, Or Rusted Statuettes As Such, Nor Is It The Vestiges Of Death That Grip Us In Them, But Those Of Life. Mutilation Is The Scar Left By The Struggle With Time, And A Reminder Of It - Time Which Is As Much A Part Of Ancient Works Of Art As The Material They Are Made Of, And Thrusts Up Through The Fissures, From A Dark Underworld, Where All Is At Once Chaos And Determinism.

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The Truth About A Man Lies First And Foremost In What He Hides.

Always, However Brutal An Age May Actually Have Been, Its Style Transmits Its Music Only.

The Attempt To Force Human Beings To Despise Themselves Is What I Call Hell.

Communism Destroys Democracy. Democracy Can Also Destroy Communism.

Man Knows That The World Is Not Made On A Human Scale; And He Wishes That It Were.

The Thrill Of Creation Which We Experience Which We Experience When We See A Masterpiece Is Not Unlike The Feeling Of The Artist Who Created It; Such A Work Is A Fragment Of The World Which He Has Annexed And Which Belongs To Him Alone.

There's No Such Thing As A Grown Up Person.

In A World In Which Everything Is Subject To The Passing Of Time, Art Alone Is Both Subject To Time And Yet Victorious Over It.

Even The West Has Known The Architecture Of Empty Space, Whose Object, For Thousands Of Years, Has Been Less To Construct Divine Houses, Than To Create Sacred Places, To Seize Upon Mystery And To Immerse Man In It-whether By Raising The Cyclopean Pedestal That Surrounds Him With Stars, Or By Hollowing Out The Sanctuary That Wraps Him In Haunted Night.

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Between Eigtheen And Twenty, Life Is Like An Exchange Where One Buys Stocks, Not With Money, But With Actions. Most Men Buy Nothing.

There Are Not Fifty Ways Of Fighting, There's Only One, And That's To Win. Neither Revolution Nor War Consists In Doing What One Pleases.

The Basic Problem Is That Our Civilization, Which Is A Civilization Of Machines, Can Teach Man Everything Except How To Be A Man.

Could We Bring Ourselves To Feel What The First Spectators Of An Egyptian Statue, Or A Romanesque Crucifixion, Felt, We Would Make Haste To Remove Them From The Louvre. True, We Are Trying More And More To Gauge The Feelings Of Those First Spectators, But Without Forgetting Our Own, And We Can Be Contented All The More Easily With The Mere Knowledge Of The Former, Without Experiencing Them, Because All We Wish To Do Is Put This Knowledge To The Work Of Art.

To Command Is To Serve, Nothing More And Nothing Less.

The First Duty Of A Leader Is To Make Himself Be Loved Without Courting Love. To Be Loved Without 'playing Up' To Anyone - Even To Himself.

And When Man Faces Destiny, Destiny Ends And Man Comes Into His Own.

The Twenty-first Century Will Be Spiritual Or It Will Not Be.

Our Art Culture Makes No Attempt To Search The Past For Precedents, But Transforms The Entire Past Into A Sequence Of Provisional Responses To A Problem That Remains Intact.

He Who Has Dreamed For Long Resembles His Dream.

The True Painter Strives To Paint What Can Only Be Seen Through His World.

In The Realm Of Human Destiny, The Depth Of Man's Questionings Is More Important Than His Answers.

The Crucial Discovery Was Made That, In Order To Become Painting, The Universe Seen By The Artist Had To Become A Private One Created By Himself.

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As For The Outside World, The Artist Is Confronted By What He Sees; But What He Sees Is Primarily What He Looks At.

An Art Book Is A Museum Without Walls.

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The Artist Is Not The Transcriber Of The World, He Is Its Rival.

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