Herbert Read > Quotes

“In History, stagnant waters, whether they be stagnant waters of custom or those of despotism, harbour no life; life is dependent on the ripples created by a few eccentric individuals. In homage to that life and vitality, the community has to brave certain perils and must countenance a measure of heresy. One must live dangerously if one wants to live at all.”
― Herbert Read

“Simplicity is not a goal, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, as one approaches the real meaning of things.”
― Herbert Read

“To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.”
― Herbert Read

“Magic is not, and never has been a substitute for science, but is rather a constructive activity with a specific social function, and one that is still operative. [...] The aim of magical objects and magical rites is to arouse emotion in the group and to make such aroused emotions effective agents.”
― Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Sculpture

“Al popularizarse la cultura, al ser "mediada" a las masas, queda necesariamente diluida, castrada, deformada.”
― Herbert Read

“The modern artist, by nature and destiny, is always an individualist.”
― Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Painting

“What we need, we are told every day, is more and better leadership. But what this demand involves is a closer and closer approximation to fascism. The fascists alone have evolved an efficient form of leadership: efficient leadership is fascism.”
― Herbert Read, To Hell With Culture

“Modern man has been in search of a new language of form to satisfy new longings and aspirations - longings for mental appeasement, aspirations to unity, harmony, serenity - an end to his alienation from nature. All these arts of remote times or strange cultures either give or suggest to the modern artist forms which he can adapt to his needs, the elements of a new iconography.”
― Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Painting

“Magical activity is a kind of dynamo supplying the mechanisms of practical life with the emotional current that drives it. Hence, magic is a necessity of every sort and condition of man, and is actually found in every healthy society.”
― Read Herbert

“The true artist is indifferent to the materials and conditions imposed upon him. He accepts any conditions, so long as they can be used to express his will-to-form. Then in the wider mutations of history his efforts are magnified or diminished, taken up or dismissed, by forces which he cannot predict, and which have very little to do with the values of which he is the exponent. It is his faith that those values are nevertheless the eternal attributes of humanity.”
― Herbert Read

“You cannot impose a culture from the top--it must come from under. It grows out of the soil, out of the people, out of their daily life and work. It is a spontaneous expression of their joy of life, of their joy in work, and if this does not exist, the culture will not exist. Joy is a spiritual quality, an impalpable quality: that too cannot be forced. It must be an inevitable state of mind, born of the elementary processes of life, a by-product of natural human growth.”
― Herbert Read, To Hell With Culture

“Una obra de arte es más bien una organización de la sensación que un modo de representación.”
― Herbert Read, Education Through Art

“The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency.”
― Herbert Read

“There is a current misconception which sees in Jung an early disciple of Freud who subsequently deserted his master. Nothing could be more misleading. From the very beginning there were differences of procedure and of outlook that were bound to lead to divergent results. Freud's work is based on a scientific method restricted to the principle of causality: that is to say, it is assumed that everything that happens has an explanation in prior causes, and is merely the result of those causes. The world is a mechanism that can be taken to pieces and we can only understand how it works if we know how to dismantle and reassemble its constituent parts. Jung does not deny this causal principle, but he says it is inadequate to explain all the facts. In his view, we live and work, day by day, according to the principle of directed aim or purpose, as well as by the principle of causality. We are drawn onwards and our actions are significant for a future we cannot foresee, and will only be explicable when the final effect of the impulse becomes evident. In other words, life has a meaning as well as an explanation; a meaning, moreover, that we can never finally discover, for it is being extended all the time by the process of evolution.”
― Herbert Read, Essays in Literary Criticism