Food For Thought

I was searching for a particular quote I recalled from Pablo Picasso and was struck by the number of great statements he made. Here are a few of the more memorable ones:

Action is the foundational key to all success.


All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.


Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.


Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.


Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.


Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.


Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.


He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.


I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.


I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.


Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.


Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.


Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.


Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.


Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.


The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.


To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de gras for the painter as well as for the picture.


We don't grow older, we grow riper.


Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?


You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.


If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.


It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.


My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.