Quotes about art and science (page 10) | Quotes of famous people

“Those things which are sacred, are to be imparted only to sacred persons; and it is not lawful to import them to the profane until they have been initiated in the mysteries of the science.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

5.
The Law

“While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times! But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

Oath of Hippocrates (c. 400 BC)

“Medicine is of all the Arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present far behind all the other arts.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

1.
The Law
Context: Medicine is of all the Arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present far behind all the other arts. Their mistake appears to me to arise principally from this, that in the cities there is no punishment connected with the practice of medicine (and with it alone) except disgrace, and that does not hurt those who are familiar with it. Such persons are like the figures which are introduced in tragedies, for as they have the shape, and dress, and personal appearance of an actor, but are not actors, so also physicians are many in title but very few in reality.

“Artists should not look to the left or the right. Art should be strong and nonconformist—and most importantly, art should always be personal.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

after 2010, Isa Genzken, the artist who doesn't do interviews' (2014)

“Because I'm a person who always has to do something. If I cannot do anything, I'm in a very bad way. But really I'm always working on something. And I always want to work, too. Well, the few artists I know really well, they are all so... It's a really bad block when you think, right, now I've got to do art. It really is very important to learn that that is not the most important thing.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

“I like to work alone, because it irritates me if people say something stupid — I just can’t stand it… I have a Polish guy who comes in and cleans the studio, but pretty much no one else. [talking over a cappuccino, at the Museum of Modern Art New York, during her show there in 2013]”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

after 2010, No, It Isn't Supposed to Be Easy' (2013)

“What, after all, is a pretty woman? It's a mere subjective impression – what you yourself think of her. That's what I paint, another kind of beauty of my own.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

Source: The Wild Men of Paris', 1910, p. 406

“A work of art should express only that which elevates the soul and pleases it in a noble manner. The feeling of the artist should not overstep these limits; it is wrong to venture beyond.”

Bettina von Arnim (1785–1859) German writer

Quoted in Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 175.
Attributed

“The way the mathematics game is played, most variations lie outside the rules, while music can insist on perfect canon or tolerate a casual accompaniment.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

“Hearing music is like viewing scenery and… when we hear good music our minds react in very much the same way they do when we see things.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

“General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

“Questions about arts, traits, and styles of life are actually quite technical. They ask us to explain what happens among the agents of our minds.”

Marvin Minsky book Society of Mind

Source: The Society of Mind (1987), Ch.2
Context: Questions about arts, traits, and styles of life are actually quite technical. They ask us to explain what happens among the agents of our minds. But this is a subject about which we have never learned very much... Such questions will be answered in time. But it will just prolong the wait if we keep using pseudo-explanation words like "holistic" and "gestalt." …It's harmful, when naming leads the mind to think that names alone bring meaning close.

“All intelligent persons also possess some larger-scale frame-systems whose members seemed at first impossibly different — like water with electricity, or poetry with music. Yet many such analogies — along with the knowledge of how to apply them — are among our most powerful tools of thought.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious (1980)
Context: All intelligent persons also possess some larger-scale frame-systems whose members seemed at first impossibly different — like water with electricity, or poetry with music. Yet many such analogies — along with the knowledge of how to apply them — are among our most powerful tools of thought. They explain our ability sometimes to see one thing — or idea — as though it were another, and thus to apply knowledge and experience gathered in one domain to solve problems in another. It is thus that we transfer knowledge via the paradigms of Science. We learn to see gases and fluids as particles, particles as waves, and waves as envelopes of growing spheres.

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation.”

Gus Speth

Quoted by Daniel crockett
Source: [Crockett, Daniel, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/daniel-crockett/nature-connection-will-be-the-next-big-human-trend_b_5698267.html/Nature, Connection Will Be the Next Big Human Trend, Huffington Post, Aug 22, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20160105052014/http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/daniel-crockett/nature-connection-will-be-the-next-big-human-trend_b_5698267.html, January 5, 2016, yes]

“Robbery and murder are the worst of human crimes; but in the West there are robbers and murderers. There are those who form cliques to vie for the reins of power and who, when deprived of that power, decry the injustice of it all. Even worse, international diplomacy is really based on the art of deception. Surveying the situation as a whole, all we can say is that there is a general prevalence of good over bad, but we can hardly call the situation perfect.”

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) Japanese author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur and journalist who founded Keio University

Bunmeiron no Gairyaku [An Outline of a Theory of Civilization] (1875).
Context: Robbery and murder are the worst of human crimes; but in the West there are robbers and murderers. There are those who form cliques to vie for the reins of power and who, when deprived of that power, decry the injustice of it all. Even worse, international diplomacy is really based on the art of deception. Surveying the situation as a whole, all we can say is that there is a general prevalence of good over bad, but we can hardly call the situation perfect. When, several thousand years hence, the levels of knowledge and virtue of the peoples of the world will have made great progress (to the point of becoming utopian), the present condition of the nations of the West will surely seem a pitifully primitive stage. Seen in this light, civilization is an open-ended process. We cannot be satisfied with the present level of attainment of the West.