Quotes by Herbert Read

About Herbert Read:

Sir Herbert Edward Read was an English anarchist, poet and literary critic, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair.

Herbert Read

Art is pattern informed by sensibility.

Herbert Read

That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.

Herbert Read

The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol.

Herbert Read

It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

Herbert Read

Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.

Herbert Read

The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough.

Herbert Read

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

Herbert Read

The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.

Herbert Read

If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical.

Herbert Read

Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life.

Herbert Read

The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves.

Herbert Read

The sensitive artist knows that a bitter wind is blowing.

Herbert Read

I know of no better name than Anarchism.

Herbert Read

In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence.

Herbert Read

I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind.

Herbert Read

It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process-in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place.

Herbert Read

Creeds and castes, and all forms of intellectual and emotional grouping, belong to the past.

Herbert Read

Morality, as has often been pointed out, is antecedent to religion-it even exists in a rudimentary form among animals.

Herbert Read

There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country.

Herbert Read

Author Bio

  • NameHerbert Read
  • DescriptionEnglish anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art
  • AliasesSir Herbert Edward Read; Herbert Read
  • BornDecember 4, 1893
  • DiedJune 12, 1968
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionArt Historian; Poet; Writer; Philosopher; Anarchist
  • AwardsDistinguished Service Order; Military Cross; Erasmus Prize