René Magritte Quotes



Best 27 Quotes by René Magritte

“A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows.”

“A truly poetic canvas is an awakened dream.”

“An object is not so attached to its name that we cannot find another one that would suit it better.”

“An object never serves the same function as its image – or its name.”

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

“Between words and objects one can create new relations and specify characteristics of language and objects generally ignored in everyday life.”

“Do not accept any explanation of the world either through chance or determinism. You are not responsible for your belief. It is not even you who decides that you are not responsible – and so on to infinity. You are not obliged to believe. There is no point of departure.”

“Everyday objects shriek aloud.”

“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well...”

“I do not like money, either for itself or for what it can buy, since I want nothing we know about.”

“I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street.”

“I need to see the original paintings just as little as I have to read the original manuscripts of books.”

“I think we are responsible for the universe, but that doesn't mean we decide anything.”

“I want nevertheless to add that for me the world is a defiance of common sense.”

“If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.”

“Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.”

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“Old ideas die hard. We've had thousands of years of women having almost no rights.

Parts of the world are in a struggle toward very basic human rights for women, and most of the world isn't even there yet. And it's going to take a long time to change these attitudes.”


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“No object is stuck with its name so irrevocably that one cannot find another which suits it better.”

“Nothing is confused except the mind.”

“People who look for symbolic meaning fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the images.”

“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.”

“The present reeks of mediocrity and the atom bomb.”

“The purpose of art is mystery.”

“This is not a pipe.”

“Those who become entangled in these false ideas are prevented from perceiving the Integral Oneness.”

“Too often we tend to reduce what is strange to what is familiar. I intend to restore the familiar to the strange.”

“We are surrounded by curtains. We only perceive the world behind a curtain of semblance. At the same time, an object needs to be covered in order to be recognized at all.”

“We must not fear daylight just because it almost always illuminates a miserable world.”

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“For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.”


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