“There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.”

— Akira Kurosawa, book Something Like an Autobiography

Something Like an Autobiography (1981)
Context: Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself." by Akira Kurosawa?

Akira Kurosawa photo

Akira Kurosawa16

Japanese film maker 1910–1998

Related quotes

“Nothing is more commonplace than the reading experience, and yet nothing is more unknown. Reading is such a matter of course that at first glance it seems there is nothing to say about it.”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

Reading as Construction (1980)

“For nothing is more fulfilling than love itself”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

“If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism — at least in the sense of this work — is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.”

Ludwig Feuerbach book The Essence of Christianity

Preface
The Essence of Christianity (1841)

“Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

“On Philosophy: To Dorothea,” in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 421

“The odd thing about this form of communication is you're more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many… somethings. So, thanks.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

“Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

“The work of art should be entirely conceived and formed by the mind before its execution. It should receive nothing from Nature’s formal properties or from sensuality or sentimentality... The picture should be constructed entirely from purely plastic elements, that is to say, planes and colours. A pictorial element has no other significance than 'itself', and therefore the picture has no other significance than 'itself.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from the first and only! issue of the art-magazine 'Art Concret', Paris 1930
1926 – 1931

“Nothing is more ridiculous than a tyrant, whose fear is gradually losing itself.”

Daniel Salamanca (1863–1935) President of Bolivia (1863-1935)

“Nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Enguerrand VII de Coucy, quoted on p. 570
A Distant Mirror (1978)

“There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Source: Paradoxes of Faith (1987), Ch. X. "Man", p. 137

Related topics