The conscience of an artist worthy of the name is like an incurable disease which causes him endless torment but occasionally fills him with silent joy.
Every museum is full of nice things. That's the opposite of before. It was important things or serious things. Now we have interesting things.
I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.
When I begin, theoretically and practically I can smear anything I want on the canvas. Then there's a condition I have to react to, by changing it or destroying it.
I don't think I can do this - painting under observation. It's the worst thing there is, worse than being in the hospital.
I believe that art has a kind of rightness, as in music, when we hear whether or not a note is false
Oh, you know. I am secretary of state. My trips aren't successful. I just talk to people.
I don't know how you define 'neoconservatism,' but I think it's associated with trying to spread open political systems and democracy.
Increasingly, the state system has been eroding. Terrorists have exploited this weakness by burrowing into the state system in order to attack it.
Strong growth means increased use of energy at a pace that can strain the capacity to supply what is needed at a reasonable price.
Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations.
But every day I go to work I'm making a bet that the universe is simple, symmetric, and aesthetically pleasing—a universe that we humans, with our limited perspective, will someday understand.
Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy.
was quick, lively, ingenious and profound, with great activity of mind and great facility of manipulation. I should place him at the head of all the living chemists in France.
Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer.
If 300 million people were to offer up the details of their private lives, you would need to hire another 300 million people just to keep up.
We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing.
I began demonstrating against serious culture. In hindsight, the actual course of events has been very humiliating for me, because no one picked up on the intellectual critique I made.
The whole drive of western culture, the part of it which is serious, is towards an extreme objectification. It's carried to the point where the human subject is treated almost as if it's dirt in the works of a watch.
I've been practising Buddhism for forty years, and that's what has led me to this path of discovering my own humanity and recognizing the humanity in others.
My first Grammy wasn't even in a jazz category, but of course I was really excited. 'Rockit' was the beginning of kind of a new era for the whole hip-hop movement.
