Great artists quotes:

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Good artists copy, great artists steal. -- Pablo Picasso
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. -- Igor Stravinsky
I believe artists deserve all the help they can get, so they can focus on being great artists. -- Janina Gavankar
Artists were always referred to as great artists. I thought that's what the profession was. One word: great-artist. There wasn't one moment in my life when I thought I wanted to be anything else. -- Hedda Sterne
Good artists copy; great artists steal. -- Pablo Picasso
The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal, -- Banksy
All great artists and thinkers are great workers. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
... the great artists ... do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. -- Brenda Ueland
For every good art critic there may be ten great artists. -- Clement Greenberg
I've never been able to understand where great artists come from. -- Harold Prince
I think the great artists (..) have always thought with the heart. -- Douglas Sirk
The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths. -- Stefan Zweig
The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity. -- Guy de Maupassant
True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age. -- Sophie Swetchine
Originality is way overrated. To make, you need to take. All great artists do. -- Walter Darby Bannard
Soul music has so many great artists who put their thing down. That's important. -- Raekwon
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. -- H. L. Mencken
The lives great artists live and the books they write are two very different things. -- Michael Cunningham
I cannot be convinced that great artists are moralists. Art is first appearances, then meaning. -- Camille Paglia
Well, first of all it's entertainment. That stops us becoming too pretentious or thinking we're great artists. -- Richard Thompson
All really great artists, Jackson Pollack, John Cage, Beckett or Joyce - you are never indifferent to them. -- Jonathan Safran Foer
There are so many great artists, I think, who kind of suffer from being icons, legends, acknowledged masters. -- Richard Linklater
I love music and musicians. And seeing great artists dropped from labels was really frustrating and sad to me. -- Rosanna Arquette
All great artists know that part of their task is to light up the distance between two human beings. -- Nadeem Aslam
I love music and musicians. And seeing great artists dropped from labels was really frustrating and sad to me -- Rosanna Arquette
Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists. -- Ezra Pound
Cookery is a wholly unselfish art: All good cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience worth cooking for. -- Andre Simon
There are so many great artists and most of them are women, but that's good - the more the merrier! -- Rachel Stevens
There are so many great artists that are doing interesting things, that I don't want to focus on boring people. -- Kathleen Hanna
It's not curators, it's not critics, it's not the public, it's not collectors who find great artists - it's other artists. -- David Galenson
I like Simon Cowell - look at how many great artists have come out of the U.K. because of him. -- George Benson
The ad business has some of the great artists, but because there are so many, its hard to determine the true gems. -- Steve Stoute
Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. -- Walter Isaacson
All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike. -- Maya Angelou
The great artists represent you. The great products represent you. They don't tell you who you are. But with them, you require less verbiage. -- Andrew Loog Oldham
All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries. -- Karl Pearson
Master Alfred de Musset says great artists have no country. They have also no world! They belong to the space, to the universe, to anything infinite! -- Mehmet Murat ildan
The great leaders of business, industry and finance, and the great artists, poets, musicians and writers all became great because they developed the power of self-motivation . -- Napoleon Hill
To be quite blunt, I make pictures for money, to pay the rent.There are some great artists in the business. I am not one of them. -- John Ford
The great artists do not seek their forms in the midst of the past, but take the deepest soundings they can of the genuine, profoundest of their age. -- Franz Marc
It just makes you a better artist when you're with people who are great artists themselves. Being around Kanye, soaking up all the knowledge, all the stuff he got. -- Big Sean
I didn't want to just work within Hollywood when I started a production company. I wanted to be able to collaborate with great artists from all over the world. -- Joseph Gordon-Levitt
It feels like my job is to support people. I support great artists. When I worked with a symphony, I sat in the third chair, not the first chair. -- Nile Rodgers
What do great artists do when you see a world around you that's in turmoil? Some of the best artists make you feel good (hah), they look to the future. -- Nile Rodgers
Great art comes from great artists. There's a bunch of people that are hurt that still couldn't have made the album that was super-polarizing and redefined the sound of radio. -- Kanye West
That's the thing about great artists: They find the thing that's most obvious to themselves, what's most conscious and natural, and they put it out there and the audience comes. -- Steve Vai
I think that most great artists who are extremely known, as I am, would intimidate a lot of people. I don't want to do that to people, but I know I do. -- Ray Charles
I cannot avoid condemning all those who, from self-conceit have the pretension to imitate great artists of the past. If their powers of emotion be weak, their powers of expression will be likewise. -- Jean-Georges Noverre
Individuality and originality is was separates good and great artists! How much they can move people with what they do! If they can shake the heart with what they do, is the key! -- Hiromi
There's not one major greatest influence on my career. It would be film and great artists and great imagineers - Jim Henson, Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, people who understand the joy of the imagination. -- Zac Posen
When I'm dead and no longer the threat. My comfort is that all the great artists since the beginning of time have always been completely misunderstood and never fully appreciated until they were dead. -- Madonna Ciccone
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You watched the sunset today? You are rich! You missed it? You are poor! Try to meet the great artists in every opportunity possible to increase your wealth! And Sun is a very great artist! -- Mehmet Murat ildan
The reason that some singers go on to become great artists has very little to do with their voices, but rather with the fact that they have used their instruments as tools for detailed communication. -- Renee Fleming
Practically all great artists accept the influence of others. But... the artist with vision sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personnel. -- Romare Bearden
To try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another, in a picture. -- Vincent Van Gogh
Recently, the Germans have developed a tendency to prefer the so-called first (youthful) style of great artists to their mature works. Could it be that they do not realize that their aesthetic criteria, generally speaking, are juvenile? -- Franz Grillparzer
I wish I was better at art. I love some of the great artists of the 19th century and, compared to them, I just feel I lack this technique that they had. They have so much skill. -- Hayao Miyazaki
You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment. -- Eddie Vedder
Saw has been a unique experience in that Ive had the opportunity to work with some really great artists, and everyone has contributed in so many different ways, in all of the different departments of a film crew. -- Tobin Bell
He wasn't, but producers are by definition annoying because they have a different agenda from you. They're trying to stop you spending money and you're trying to not spend money, but at the same time we're great artists. -- Michael Apted
Saw' has been a unique experience in that I've had the opportunity to work with some really great artists, and everyone has contributed in so many different ways, in all of the different departments of a film crew. -- Tobin Bell
Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists. -- Lara St. John
If you subtracted all of the great artists who never drank, who never went to excess, you wouldn't have any more art left. What kind of poem are you gonna get out of a glass of iced tea? -- David Lee Roth
I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that's all they do, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, that's great! -- Paul Rust
It's often the case that great artists - people like Bruce Springsteen - tend to pick up the subterranean rumblings of profound social change long before the economic statisticians notice them. Changes start long before they become statistics. -- Wayne Swan
Now, when you look at somebody, it's not simply, 'Are you like me or unlike me? Has your culture produced great artists? What are your rituals?' It's: 'Is your culture safe or not? Will it produce terrorists?' -- Homi K. Bhabha
The Rock'n'Blues Fest is my kind of festival series! It's always great playing shows with my brother and, add to that, all the other great artists and their bands and this should make for one historic round of concerts. -- Johnny Winter
I find that the great artists I've met are people who are so playfully invested in their process that, even if it doesn't come out the way they like, they still power through and even take energy from it. -- George Saunders
I'm doing what great artists before me did, like Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Eddie Cantor. I'm doing what they were doing, not at their level yet, but one day I will be. I'm just happy to be in their company. -- Mike Tyson
What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings. -- David Foster Wallace
But some great records are are being made with today's technology and there are still great artists among us. Likewise there are artists today who are so reliant on modern technology, they wouldn't have emerged when recording was more organic. -- Tony Visconti
But Zarathustra made it clear in which direction the answer lay; it is towards the artist-psychologist, the intuitional thinker. There are very few such men in the world's literature; the great artists are not thinkers, the great thinkers are seldom artists. -- Colin Wilson
All the children of America, up to age seven or eight or nine or ten - they're really great artists. So here we've got this amazing work that very few people pay any attention to, and it's not valued by the culture. -- Chris Martin
We've always had a tradition in America of hounding our artists to death. Look at the list of our great artists, you see a continual history of defeat, frustration, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction. The best poets of my generation are all suicides. -- James Dickey
If I see a great performance on television, onstage, in the movies, I go to work the next day with a renewed energy and less fear. These great artists take me out of my life and make me want to go there. -- Elaine Stritch
There were some extremely good teachers there that were great artists really in their own right. It was actually very hard to concentrate on getting down to going any work being an art student especially when it's a flighty thing at best. -- Graham Coxon
Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord in humans everywhere. -- Maurice Saatchi
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. -- John Steinbeck
The so-called 'discoveries' of the Impressionists could not have been unknown to the old masters; and if they made no use of them, it was because all great artists have renounced the use of effects. And in simplifying nature, they made it all the greater. -- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
I have been in the music industry ever since I was six years old. I have been inspired by so many great artists and of course trying to be original at the same time. I try not to work under boundaries while I'm making music. -- Asher Monroe
People have libraries at home, they have bookshelves, they have CDs. And they sort of try, people try to bring great artists into their lives, into their physical houses and sort of live with portions of them. But they're not really deeply engaging with them. -- Joyce Carol Oates
Painting like a child' isn't a negative for me... it's something only great artists can really achieve. The childlike quality of some of Picasso's drawings is precisely what makes them so masterful and extraordinary; the ability to express complete visions, feelings and portraits through a continuous line. -- Damien Hirst
Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high. -- Viktor E. Frankl
All the great artists of the world slowly slowly start growing a quality of feminineness, grace, elegance, exquisiteness. A certain flavor of softness, relaxedness, calmness and quietness surrounds them. They are no longer feverish. What I am teaching here is really to turn the whole world feminine. -- Rajneesh
In general, you have great artists who have died far too early and who have left great cultural impact. If you look at people like Vincent van Gogh or Jean-Michel Basquiat-there's a long, long list of artists who have died in tragic circumstances, and far, far too early. -- Simon de Pury
There's lots of things that can't make it in the world that are worth making. There are lots of great artists who never make it, there are lots of great writers who don't get published - is it still worthwhile? Aren't we glad people are still doing it? -- Dana Spiotta
I know that some of the great painters and some of the great artists didn't even start to 'peak', as you say, till they were in their fifties and sixties. And God knows, history is full of artistic people that weren't even recognized till they were dead and gone. -- Joe Perry
I think the key to great art and great artists is to just fully be yourself and not be scared of that, and be the extremes of your personality. Show the extremes of your personality and embrace the imperfections. Embrace the things about yourself that you might not like. -- King Tuff
To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry. There are so many great artists out there. And the goal is to make great movies, you know? So to be successful, quality is the best business plan as I always say. -- John Lasseter
I think that when you're making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second. -- Taylor Swift
It is so important for me to keep authentic Cuban sounds alive. All of these great artists have changed the landscape of Latin music and it's an honor to have them on this album ["90 Millas," released in September of 2007]. I believe this album will expose a new generation to the richness of Cuban music. -- Gloria Estefan
I remember being influenced by great artists when I was a kid - not to call myself a great artist - but people who I thought were great enough that they really made a difference. And so I would never want to be disappointed by them, and I want to make sure I never disappoint audience. -- Sarah Jones
The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts -- D.T. Suzuki
I think I can see people wanting to hear more music-music now as opposed to all hip-hop. You know, which I have nothing against hip-hop. I think some of it is really good. But on the other hand, some of the real great artists are just being lost because they're not getting the airplay or anything to make them inspired to record again. -- Nickolas Ashford
The truth is . . . that the great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom ever ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman. -- H. L. Mencken
Each film has its processes. It doesn't mean that all animated films have to be like "Boy and the World," but creators have to have total freedom. There are films that are born with the purpose to sell. They are still admirable films with great artists and great visuals, but we wanted to use a more radical approach to create art. That's what we tried to do. -- Alex Abreu
I'm happy to say that at 62, I think I've reached that point where stuff doesn't bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that I've had, and losing so many of the great artists that I was close to. They taught me how to see it with a grain of salt and a lot of humor and perspective. -- Bonnie Raitt
Great artists have no country. -- Alfred de Musset
A great artist is never poor. -- Isak Dinesen
Great artists suffer for the people. -- Marvin Gaye
Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny. -- Franz Liszt
The great artist is a slave to his ideals. -- Christian Nestell Bovee
Richard Serra, the great sculptor, personifies an artist for me. -- Charlie Rose
Working with other artists and sharing your passions is great. -- Leona Lewis
As theater artists, it's a great luxury to have time. -- Jonathan Freeman
A great chef is an artist that I truly respect. -- Robert Stack
A great artist is a great man in a great child. -- Victor Hugo
A great artist can paint a great picture on a small canvas. -- Charles Dudley Warner
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. -- Oscar Wilde
The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. -- Willa Cather
I think any artist that's going to become anything in this world faces humility: with great humility comes great success. -- Yelawolf
I wish I was a great writer or a great journalist or a great scientist or a great artist; I'm not. -- Nicolas Berggruen
I love Frank Ocean. I think he's so talented and his music is so great. So, I would love to do one of his songs like 'Bad Religion' or 'Pink Matter.' -- Jacob Artist
Creative artists have great passion. -- Jack Welch
Great artists need great clients. -- I. M. Pei
Minor artists borrow, great ones steal. -- Ned Rorem
If artists do have ideas, they're often not great. -- Hiro Murai
Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness. -- Catherine Drinker Bowen
I love Fun. They're great guys. They're incredible artists and musicians. -- Janelle Monae

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