Kenneth Clark famous quotes

03-28-2025

Over and above the political, economic, sociological, and international implications of racial prejudices, their major significance is that they place unnecessary burdens upon human beings.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Justice #Political #Prejudice
The recognized achievements of some Negroes, despite rigid racial barriers, indicate that society by its prejudices may be depriving itself of valuable contributions from many others. It is now doubtful whether America can afford the luxury of such a waste of human resources.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Luxury #America #Justice
The dark ghettos are social, political, educational and-above all-economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject peoples, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt, and fear of their masters.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Educational #Ghetto #Dark
Racial prejudices are indication of a disturbed and potentially unstable society.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Prejudice #Civil Rights #Unstable
A racist system inevitably destroys and damages human beings; it brutalizes and dehumanizes them, blacks and whites alike.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Racist #Damage #Humans
I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Believe #Ignorance #Men
We are part of a great whole. All living things are our brothers and sisters.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Brother #Brothers And Sisters #Living Things
Children who are treated as if they are uneducable almost invariably become uneducable.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Children #Treated #Ifs
I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Hurt #Kindness #Believe
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Motivational #Attitude #Inspiration
Art...must do something more than give pleasure: it should relate to our own life so as to increase our energy of spirit.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Art #Giving #Energy
Few people can look at a painting longer than it takes to peel an orange and eat it.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Orange #People #Looks
Pride, like humility, is destroyed by one's insistence that he possesses it.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Humility #Pride #Destroyed
I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Believe #Genius #Individual
No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling... The desire to grasp and be united with another human is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgement of what is known as 'pure form' is inevitably influenced by it, and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot be hidden.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Art #Judgement #Erotic
All color is no color.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Color #Colour
In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate men.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Country #Stupid #War
The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which mankind is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshiped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Men #Order #Giving
The great artist takes what he needs.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Artist #Needs #Great Art
The eye instinctively looks for analogies and amplifies them, so that a face imagined in the pattern of a wallpaper may become more vivid than a photograph.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Eye #Looks #Analogies
One musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.
-- Kenneth Clark

#War #Swans #People
It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.
-- Kenneth Clark

#Drawing #Said #Leonardo

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