Top 15 Art Young Quotes

Judged by that standard of success which most of the American people accept and believe, I would be classed among the failures. Now past sixty, with an obvious talent and reasonably industrious in doing the work I like, yet never in my life very far from bankruptcy. If I should happen to be a money success when I am old-and the years ahead of me very few-the fact remains the same; in the common vernacular, I lacked brains to get on and clean up; throughout all the years of an average life-time. I belong with the failures-with the man who is sitting at home tonight after his day's work who knows that his wife, his relatives and friends think; "he is a failure." I'm with this man and the whole army of splendid men and women who wear the ragged badge of defeat. I know that some people are successful who deserve to be, but I am with the unadaptable, the out-of-luck, the weary with the money-struggle. I am with them but not sadly because in my vision of a new world there is going to be a different definition of success. (March 1st)

One has to catch a train in this kind of a civilization. You can't be careless or gay, you must crowd in and go somewhere, or get left on the desert of your dreams. (October 31st)

No matter how individualistic and aloof the creative mind is it wants the kinship of all kinds of minds. To be accepted by a few in authority, although a grateful distinction, is not quite satisfactory. In the long run every true artist wants the wave-length universal. (October 30th)

When anyone tells me he hates a particular race of people, I can work up a little hate myself-not for the race-but for the one who is talking. (October 27th)

I have made many sketches of the moon and its frame of sky and cloud, always changing, never repeating. I never cease to wonder at the vast populations of the world since time began and no two faces have ever been just alike. And however much governments and society try to mold the human mind to think according to pattern, there is always a tiny something different and non-conformist in every human being, though they fear to express it. (October 25th)

Nothing is important but what we do and how well we do it. If money comes-well and good; if not-we may regret not having had the thrill of plenty to carry out our dreams; but there is comfort in the thought of having lived without being tempted away from our principles by too much consideration for a pile of money. (October 17th)

is it not wrong for intelligent, creative men to exercise the humorous faculties of their minds, every day, all of the time, year in and year out? I would say that it is brain-abuse. (October 16th)

In art and literature I am always on the side of the experimentalist and those who break with tradition, knowing full well that there are some rules of art just as truly as there is a law of equilibrium. These rules a real artist picks up as he does the brush, the pencil, or chisel that have come down from antiquity. But a real artist is also a rebel. Tradition, for all its accepted truisms, is the enemy. The fact that a few accepted or basic facts reveal themselves in all art from the primitive to the classical is not more important than that the iconoclast shall have his day. Within the larger truths there are always a lot of other truths that no one sees till the radical dares to investigate and bring them to light. (October 13th)

No great height is reached when it is said of you that you are a master of expression. What matters is what you have to say. Is your message big enough for humanity, or is it a reflex of your narrowness and petty prejudice? (October 11th)

What crimes and follies are committed by the need for money! Most people live at high pressure . (October 11th)

aside from the appearance of a tree by day or night-is it not kin of the human family with its roots in the earth and its arms stretching toward the sky as if to seek and to know the great mystery? (October 8th)

...instructors never meant much to me. You listen to a teacher and are thankful for his point of view. But your art school is worth while mainly because you learn to be patient and because many others are there who are going in your direction toward creative expression. The atmosphere and contacts are congenial and stimulating. On the whole-the bigger and better school is the world you live in-alone you make your way. (October 7th)

An artist will protect his offspring as a hen covers her chicks. Dismiss the created offering of an artist as unworthy, you start a rebellion that savors of outraged paternity. But one never ought to let rejection sink in. He should be up and at it. (October 6th)

I don't mind tinkling a little in this Bedlam called popularity, but my real desire is to ring true-as nearly true as I can get. I have always believed in my star, that light to live and create, and to express myself in pictures of simplicity and strength. (October 1st)

Hardly a day goes by that the problem of duty to myself-versus duty to others does not arise. (September 29th)