100+ Famous Quotes on the Arts – Inspiring Art Quotes for Creativity & Motivation

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” – Pablo Picasso

“All art is but imitation of nature.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle

“Art reveals truth; science conceals it.” – Oscar Wilde

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” – Twyla Tharp

“To send light into the darkness of men's hearts—such is the duty of the artist.” – Robert Schumann

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Edgar Degas

“Art penetrates the mystery better than science.” – Albert Schweitzer

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” – Pablo Picasso

“Art is the proper task of life.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Art is the highest form of hope.” – Georges Braque

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” – Oscar Wilde

“Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou

“Art is the only way to escape being crushed by the world.” – Henry Miller

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul.” – Martha Graham

“To be creative means to be in love with life.” – Julia Cameron

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso

“The artist sees what others only catch a glimpse of.” – Isadora Duncan

“Art is not made in a vacuum; it comes from your soul.” – Frida Kahlo

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein

“Without imagination, there is no art.” – Luis Buñuel

“A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.” – Eugene Ionesco

“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.” – René Magritte

“I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.” – Frida Kahlo

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” – Cesar A. Cruz

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy, and torment.” – Claude Monet

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” – Twyla Tharp

“The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Art is the explosion of the soul.” – José Clemente Orozco

“Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.” – Orhan Pamuk

“What moves people about my paintings is the human cry.” – Francis Bacon

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton

“Art is the daughter of freedom.” – Friedrich Schiller

“I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent van Gogh

“The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting.” – Vincent van Gogh

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” – Émile Zola

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.” – Pablo Picasso

“An artist’s career always begins tomorrow.” – James McNeill Whistler

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

“Success in art is survival.” – Joseph Beuys

“I have good days and bad days. On the good days, I think I’m the best artist in the world.” – Salvador Dalí

“The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” – Piet Mondrian

“Every artist dips his brush in his soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“Beauty is the promise of happiness.” – Stendhal

“Art is the objectivation of beauty.” – Friedrich Schiller

“There is no must in art because art is free.” – Wassily Kandinsky

“Art disturbs, science reassures.” – Georges Braque

“To me, beauty is a religious experience.” – Yves Saint Laurent

“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The beautiful is as useful as the useful… perhaps more so.” – Hugo van der Goes

“Art should be something like a good armchair in which one can sit as comfortably as possible.” – Henri Matisse

“Art is the most beautiful of all lies.” – Charles Baudelaire

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance, but the inward significance.” – Aristotle

“Nothing makes us so lonely as our own beauty.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“Art is a weapon in the struggle for freedom.” – Diego Rivera

“Art is not a thing; it is a way.” – Elbert Hubbard

“Art should be accessible to all, not just the elite.” – Banksy

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.” – Antoni Tàpies

“Art is the conscience of a nation.” – Ai Weiwei

“Art has the power to change the world.” – Pablo Picasso

“Art is the stored honey of the human soul.” – Theodore Dreiser

“Art is the only way to express the inexpressible.” – John Lennon

“Art is the voice of the oppressed.” – Subcomandante Marcos

“Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.” – Kahlil Gibran

“Art is the most effective mode of communication that exists.” – John Dewey

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” – Bertolt Brecht

“Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” – Pablo Picasso

“I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.” – Vincent van Gogh

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The muse is always waiting, but she only visits those who show up.” – Lisa Congdon

“Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.” – Michelangelo

“My inspiration is the world around me.” – Yayoi Kusama

“The artist is the receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” – Pablo Picasso

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London

“Inspiration is everywhere—you just have to be open to it.” – Takashi Murakami

“I don’t wait for inspiration. I provoke it.” – Chuck Close

“The best way to capture inspiration is to be caught in the act of creating.” – Hugh MacLeod

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Art is the only freedom.” – William S. Burroughs

“Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.” – Moshe Dayan

“Art is rebellion.” – Man Ray

“The freedom of the artist is not freedom from discipline, but freedom to create.” – Robert Motherwell

“Art is the declaration of independence of the human spirit.” – Unknown

“Creative freedom is the foundation of great art.” – Ansel Adams

“Without freedom, there can be no art.” – Ai Weiwei

“Art is the lie that tells the truth.” – Pablo Picasso

“The artist chooses to be free.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

“Art is the only place where freedom still lives.” – Ai Weiwei

“Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.” – Potter Stewart

“Art must take reality by surprise.” – René Magritte

“Art endures, even when empires fall.” – Unknown

“Great art is timeless because it speaks to the eternal human condition.” – Susan Sontag

“Art is the only immortality.” – George Bernard Shaw

“The arts are not a pastime. They are a second necessity of life.” – Winston Churchill

“Art is the only way we touch the infinite.” – Daniel Barenboim

“Art lives beyond the artist.” – Gustav Klimt

“Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense of a free mind.” – Pablo Picasso

“Time destroys the works of man, but art conquers time.” – Anonymous

“Art is the signature of civilizations.” – Beverly Sills

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion.” – Alexander Calder

“Art is the only proof we have of our immortality.” – Leo Tolstoy

“A work of art contains its eternity within itself.” – Paul Klee

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Edgar Degas

“To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.” – Pablo Picasso

“The making of art is the expression of the struggle to make meaning.” – Louise Bourgeois

“I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.” – Pablo Picasso

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over.” – Pablo Picasso

“Art is always simpler than you think.” – Willem de Kooning

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams

“Art happens when you don’t try to control it.” – Jackson Pollock

“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone.” – Frida Kahlo

“Art is not about making something perfect. It’s about making something true.” – Unknown

“The process is the message.” – Robert Irwin

“You don’t make art. Art makes you.” – Francis Alys