Pablo Picasso Quotes

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”

“Everything you can imagine is real.”

“Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.”

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

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”

“If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse… but surely you will see the wildness!”

“We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.”

“What do you think an artist is?… he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence transform a yellow spot into a sun.”

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”

“You don't make art, you find it”

“Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.”

“Go and do the things you can't. That is how you get to do them.”

“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”

“People want to find a 'meaning' in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical but believes itself to be more practical than any other age.”

“Love is the greatest refreshment in life”

“When I was 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.”

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

“For me, there are two kinds of women — goddesses and doormats.”

“I do not evolve, I AM.”

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

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

“It takes a very long time to become young.”

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

“Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. If he only shows in his work that he has searched, and re-searched, for the way to put over lies, he would never accomplish anything.”

“The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”

“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”

“[Speaking of computers] But they are useless. They can only give you answers.”

“It's like God's. God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.”

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

“To draw, you must close your eyes and sing”

“Youth has no age.”

“When I don't have red, I use blue.”

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”

“I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. After all, what is a painter? He is a collector who gets what he likes in others by painting them himself. This is how I begin and then it becomes something else.”

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

“What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”

“Give me a museum and I'll fill it.”

“All art is erotic.”

“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”

“Every positive value has its price in negative terms… the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.”

“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”

“Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not melt in one's bath.”

“We don't grow older we grow riper.”

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions derived from anywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing figure, from a spider’s web. This is a spider's web. This is why one must not make a distinction between things. For them there are no aristocratic quarterings. One must take things where one finds them.”

“What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction." ― Pablo Picasso”

“Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.”

“There is only one way to see things,
until someone shows us how to look at them
with different eyes”

“The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.”

“If they took away all my paints, I'd use pastels, if they took away my pastels, I'd use crayons, if they took away my crayons, I'd use a pencil. If they put me in a cell, and stripped me of everything, I'd spit on my finger and draw on the wall.”

“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

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

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”

“Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do it's bidding.”

“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”

“It took me a lifetime.”

“Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it… myself included.”

“The more technique you have the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is the less there is.”

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

“The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.”