Quotes by Herbert Read

“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 ...”

“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...”

“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.”

“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.”

“The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough.”

“The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions,...”

“I call religion a natural authority, but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.”

“The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosopher...”

“Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.”

“Art is pattern informed by sensibility.”

“Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.”

“It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.”

“The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair.”

“Poetry is creative expression; Prose is constructive expression. … by creative I mean original. In Poetry the words are born or reborn in the act of thinking. … There is no time interval between th...”

“The Thousand and One Nights, with its magnificent apparatus of genii and afrits, is the greatest work of fantasy that has ever been evolved by tradition, and given literary form. But it, alas, is n...”

“It is not my purpose as a poet to condemn war (or to be exact, modern warfare). I only wish to present the universal aspects of a particular event,”

“Such is our ideal – not another museum, another bleak exhibition gallery, another classical building in which insulated and classified specimens of a culture are displayed for instruction, but an a...”

“I believe that the poet is necessarily an anarchist, and that he must oppose all organized conceptions of the State, not only those which we inherit from the past, but equally those which are impos...”

“The modern poet has no essential alliance with regular schemes of any sorts.He reserves the right to adapt his rhythm to his mood, to modulate his metre as he progresses. Far from seeking freedom a...”

“Art is most simply and most usually defined as an attempt to create pleasing forms. Such forms satisfy our sense of beauty and the sense of beauty is satisfied when we are able to appreciate a unit...”