Quotes about colors
page 11

Francis Escudero photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Samuel Gompers photo

“In many instances the conduct of colored workmen, and those who have spoken for them, has not been in asking or demanding that equal rights be accorded to them as to white workmen, but somehow conveying the idea that they are to be petted and coddled and given special consideration and special privilege. Of course that can't be done.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

Gompers, Samuel. The Samuel Gompers Papers: The American Federation of Labor and the Great War, 1917-18. Stuart Bruce Kaufman, Peter J. Albert, and Grace Palladino, eds. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006, p. 348.

John Adams photo

“My friend, there is something very serious in this business. The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost, Who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the Bishop on the heads of candidates for the ministry.... There is no authority, civil or religious — there can be no legitimate government — but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it — all without it is rebellion and perdition, or, in more orthodox words, damnation... Your prophecy, my dear friend, has not become history as yet. I have no resentment of animosity against the gentleman [Jefferson] and abhor the idea of blackening his character or transmitting him in odious colors to posterity. But I write with difficulty and am afraid of diffusing myself in too many correspondences. If I should receive a letter from him, however, I should not fail to acknowledge and answer it.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Adams as misquoted by David Barton, in "The Dream of Dr. Benjamin Rush & God's Hand in Reconciling John Adams and Thomas Jefferson" in WallBuilders (June 2008) http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=10152; omitting many words, giving a very misleading impression that Adams (who did not believe in the Christian Trinity) is endorsing the viewpoint that a government must be administered by the Holy Ghost to be legitimate. Barton went on to use another version, substituting some of Adams' words with false ones:
Misattributed

John the Evangelist photo
Karen Blixen photo
Camille Pissarro photo
Jozef Israëls photo

“That's how it is
One day two paintings were hanging,
Right opposite each other
Really colorful and beautiful the one
And the other simple and honest
* That simplicity and truth are the characteristics
of science and of art.
Well, people can not understand that.
It was to the tinsel that they gave their favor.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (kort gedicht van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands):
Zoo is het
Er hingen eens twee schilderijen,
Juist vlak tegenover elkaar
Regt kleurig en schitterend de eene
En d'ander eenvoudig en waar
** Dat eenvoud en waarheid het kenmerk
Van wetenschap is en van kunst
Och, dat kan het volk niet begrijpen
En [aan] 't klatergoud schonk het zijn gunst.
A short poem of Israëls, written in his letter from The Hague, 13 Dec. 1876 to art-seller Pilgeram & Lefèvre in London; from collection of Fondation Custodia, Institut Neérlandais Paris, input no. 1971-A 506
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Miss Foozie photo

“I love people, it doesn’t matter their color, nationality, sexual orientation, whatever. We all live here on the same planet. I also don’t like this good looking/bad looking thing. Who cares? Just because you don’t have looks doesn’t mean you aren’t pretty inside.”

Miss Foozie (1960) drag queen

[ Terry Oldes http://www.terryoldes.com/, A Barrel Full of Monkeys – OR – More Baggage Than Ann Miller Brought On the Love Boat, 2008-03-28, 2007-08-14, Starbooks Press http://www.starbookspress.com/, Sarasota, Florida, Foozie, http://www.missfoozie.com/terryoldes.htm]
[ Terry Oldes http://www.terryoldes.com/, Miss Foozie, http://www.missfoozie.com/terryoldes.htm, "Foozie" by Terry Oldes, MISS FOOZIE http://www.missfoozie.com/, 2009-03-30]

Paul Klee photo

“Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever... Color and I are one. I am a painter.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary-note (Tunisia, 16 April 1914), # 926; as quoted by Suzanne Partsch in Klee (reissue), Benedikt Taschen, Cologne, 2007 - ISBN 978-3-8228-6361-9, p. 20
1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

“I have a dream that we can have one day, once again, a beautiful land. I have a dream that we can have a land of our own kind, in which the enemies of our people will cease to exist within our borders. I have a dream that one day, White people will be proud of themselves once again. When one day the value of race will be universally recognized, as it must be. When one day, it will be taught to keep your race pure, to ennoble and advance your race is the highest good in this world. I have dream that this current order will fall upon itself in misery, and the enemies of our people will be legally tried and convicted for their crimes. Those white people who have betrayed the interests of White people will be tried for treason, legally, through the process but will pay for their crimes. I have a dream in which the White House will one day become White once again, and not beige, and not black, and not putrid-colored green. I have a dream that we can have a land that we are proud of once again and not simply have platitudes to the American flag without having any kind of real basis behind it worthy of pride. I have a dream that one day, once again, we can be safe and secure in our homes, when one day our home will be our castle, once again, and nobody would ever dare even think about entering our home, to deprive us of what is rightfully ours.”

Matthew F. Hale (1971) White separatist religious leader

In Klassen We Trust (2002), Episode 5.

Frederick Douglass photo
Bashō Matsuo photo

“Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

sabi wa ku no iro nari. kanjaku naru ku wo iu ni arazu. tatoeba, roujin no katchuu wo taishi senjou ni hataraki, kinshuu wo kazari goen ni haberitemo, oi no sugata aru ga gotoshi.
Classical Japanese Database, Translation #42 http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/translation/view/42 (Translation: Robert Hass)
Statements

“In nature, light creates the color; in the picture, color creates light. Every color shade emanates a very characteristic light — no substitute is possible.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in Readings in American art, 1900 -1975 (1975) by Barbara Rose, p. 117
1970s and later
Variant: In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.

W.E.B. Du Bois photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Paul Klee photo
John Banville photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“I suppose he had the good luck to be executed, no? I had an hour's chat with him in Buenos Aires. He struck me as a kind of play actor, no? Living up to a certain role. I mean, being a professional Andalusian… But in the case of Lorca, it was very strange because I lived in Andalusia and the Andalusians aren't a bit like that. His were stage Andalusians. Maybe he thought that in Buenos Aires he had to live up to that character, but in Andalusia, people are not like that. In fact, if you are in Andalusia, if you are talking to a man of letters and you speak to him about bullfights, he'll say, 'Oh well, that sort of this pleases people, I suppose, but really the torero works in no danger whatsoever. Because they are bored by these things, because every writer is bored by the local color in his own country. Well, when I met Lorca, he was being a professional Andalusian… Besides, Lorca wanted to astonish us. He said to me that he was very troubled about a very important figure in the contemporary world. A character in whom he could see all the tragedy of American life. And then he went on in this way until I asked him who was this character and it turned out this character was Mickey Mouse. I suppose he was trying to be clever. And I thought, 'That's the kind of thing you say when you are very, very young and you want to astonish somebody.' But after all, he was a grown man, he had no need, he could have talked in a different way. But when he started in about Mickey Mouse being a symbol of America, there was a friend of mine there and he looked at me and I looked at him and we both walked away because we were too old for that kind of game, no? Even at that time.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Richard Burgin, Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges, pages 92-93.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

Natalie Merchant photo
Paul Gauguin photo

“.. color being enigmatic in itself.... then to be logical we cannot use it any other way than enigmatically..”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 145

Franz Marc photo

“A musical event in Münich has brought me a great dolt.... an evening of chamber-music by Arnold Schoenberg (Vienna).... the audience behaved loutishly, like school brats, sneezing and clearing their throats, when not tittering and scraping their chairs, so it was hard to follow the music. Can you imagine a music in which tonality (that is, the adherence to any key) is completely suspended? I was constantly reminded of Kandinsky's large composition which also permits no trace of tonality.... and also of Kandinsky's 'jumping spots' in hearing this music [of Schoenberg], which allows each tone sounded to stand on its own (a kind of white canvas between the spots of color). Schönberg proceeds from the principle that the concepts of consonance and dissonance do not exist at all. A so-called dissonance is only a mere remote consonance – an idea which now occupies me constantly while painting..”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

In a letter to August Macke (14 January 1911); as quoted in August Macke; Franz Marc: Briefwechsel, Cologne 1965; as quoted in Boston Modern - Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism, Judith Bookbinder, University Press of New England, Hanover and England, 2005, p. 35
Franz Marc visited a concert with music of the composer Arnold Schönberg on 11 Jan. 1911 with Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter and others; they played there compositions of Schönberg he wrote in 1907 and 1909: his second string quartet and the 'Three piano pieces'
1911 - 1914

Gerhard Richter photo
Edward R. Murrow photo
Kenneth Arrow photo
James Madison photo
Jane Roberts photo
Robert Brustein photo
Gunnar Myrdal photo
James Russell Lowell photo
Milton Friedman photo
Michelle Lambert photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo
Anton Mauve photo

“.. coloring is also drawing.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

Quote of Mauve; as cited by Vincent van Gogh in his letter to brother Theo http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let175/letter.html, from Etten, c. 12-15 Oct. 1881]
1880's

Marianne von Werefkin photo

“One life is far too little for all the things I feel within myself, and I invent other lives within and outside myself for them. A whirling crowd of invented beings surrounds me and prevents me from seeing reality. Color bites at my heart.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

from her short biography on the website of museum 'Lenbachhause', undated http://www.lenbachhaus.de/collection/the-blue-rider/werefkin/?L=1
1906 - 1911

Franz Marc photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Punk: I'm not gonna have you sit here and belittle me. Say I've lost sight? I've lost sight of things, John? The reason I say I'm gonna take that and walk out is because I don't fit a certain mold. Because I am the underdog, and that's exactly what you've lost sight of. Earlier in this ring, you mentioned great wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero and you said they used to look at you and say that the kid couldn't hang. And now you stand here and look at me as the kid that can't hang. John, I was hanging off of your gangster car, WrestleMania 22, as it rolled down in Chicago, Illinois, and I stood there in a suit looking as ridiculous as [points to Vince McMahon] that man looks right now in his suit, holding a phony Tommy gun, and I said to myself someday, I'm not gonna be standing out there watching you in the ring; I was gonna be in the ring watching you go down to CM Punk. And now here we are in your hometown of Boston. And now next week, we'll be back there in my hometown—Chicago, Illinois. And this… this is the part where I talk 'em into the building. See, you are the one that's lost sight, and I apologize for raising my voice because I'm not that guy. But when you stand here and tell me that I've lost sight, when you, the 10-time Champion who stands for hustle, loyalty and respect; who, from Boston, Massachusetts, lives and breathes these red colors, the same colors as your beloved Red Sox, who also portray themselves as the underdog, I'm sure just like the Bruins portray themselves as the underdog. Just like the Patriots think they're the underdog! Hey, how about those Celtics? Are they the underdogs too? Here's what you've lost sight of, John, and I'm really happy that your father and your wife are sitting in the front row so they can hear it!
John Cena: That's the last time I'm gonna tell you, man, ease up.
Punk: What you've lost sight of is what you are, and what you are is what you hate. You're the 10-time WWE Champion! You're the man! You, like the Red Sox, like Boston, are no longer the underdog! You're a dynasty. You are what you hate. You have become the New York Yankees! [John immediately punches Punk, who scoots out of the ring, grabs the contract, and goes up the ramp. Points respectively to Vince and John] You're Steinbrenner, and you might as well be Jeter! Mr. 3000, I'm the underdog! [John's music plays for fourteen seconds] Turn it off! Turn the music off because I have something to say, and I'm positive that everybody here wants to hear it, and everybody sitting at home has their DVRs fired up because they wanna hear it! I'm glad you just punched me in the face, John. I'm glad it went down this way because it hit me like a bolt of lightning—exactly why I no longer wanna be here, why I wanna leave. It's because I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you. I'm just tired. So ladies and gentlemen of the WWE Universe, Vince, John, Sunday night, say goodbye to the WWE Title, say goodbye to John Cena, and say goodbye to CM Punk! [Rips up the contract] I'll go be the best in the world somewhere else.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

July 11, 2011
WWE Raw

Kazimir Malevich photo
Margaret Sanger photo
Joseph Hayne Rainey photo
William Lloyd Garrison photo
Joseph Beuys photo

“The muse lends me a lyre of myriad tunes,
her brush of myriad tints—I want to play
a wizard working wonders, magic tricks
with all the sounds and colors of the earth.”

Thế Lữ (1907–1989)

Source: An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems, trans. Huỳnh Sanh Thông (Yale University Press, 1996), ISBN 978-0300064100

Linus Torvalds photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Peter Paul Rubens photo
Louis Comfort Tiffany photo

“Color is to the eye what music is to the ear.”

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) American stained glass and jewelry designer

The Art Work of Louis C. Tiffany (Doubleday, Page & Co New York, 1916)

Katy Perry photo

“'Cause baby you're a firework,
Come on, show 'em what you're worth.
Make 'em go "Oh, Oh, Oh"
As you shoot across the sky-y-y.Baby, you're a firework,
Come on, let your colors burst.
Make 'em go "Oh, Oh, Oh"
You're gonna leave 'em falling down-own-own.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

Firework, written by Katy Perry, Mikkel S. Eriksen, Tor Erik Hermansen Sandy Wilhelm, and Ester Dean
Song lyrics, Teenage Dream (2010)

Christian Dior photo

“[Black is] the most popular and the most convenient and the most elegant of all colors.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

As quoted in: Fakiko Fukai et al. (2004) Fashion in colors, p. 195

Christopher Golden photo
Joey Comeau photo
Susan Sontag photo

“The sublimity of color in Hodgkin's pictures can be thought of as, first of all, expressive of gratitude — for the world that resists and survives the ego and its discontents.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"About Hodgkin," from Howard Hodgkin Paintings (1995), p. 109

“The immediate source of ecological crisis is capitalism… Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere… I believe the color of radicalism today is not red, but green.”

Steve Chase American activist

Steve Chase, ed., Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman(Boston South End Press, 1991, p 57-59); O'Leary, Richard. Environmental mafia: the enemy is us. pp. 41

Alfred Hitchcock photo

“Deep inside, I am a shy man. And in the presence of colorful characters, I am a clam. I never try to out-eccentric the eccentricsǃ”

Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British filmmaker

As quoted in "New York Close-Up" http://www.mediafire.com/view/sllj68n3ug6dgju/Concert_Thursday_to_Aid_Memori.jpg.

Frederick Douglass photo
Hans Arp photo

“Already in 1915, Sophie Taeuber [his wife] divides the surface of her aquarelle into squares and rectangles which she then juxtaposes horizontally and perpendicularly [as Mondrian, Itten and Paul Klee did in the same period]. She constructs them as if they were masonry work. The colors are luminous, ranging from the raw yellow to deep red or blue.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 288, Arp refers in this quote to the structure in the early watercolor paintings by his wife Sophie Taeuber.

Pauli Murray photo

“This society is not hospitable to persons of color, women or left-handed people.”

Pauli Murray (1910–1985) American writer, activist and lawyer

[Boodman, Sandra, 28 February 1977, A master of many trades, Washington Post, Washington DC]

“The impressionistic method leads into a complete splitting and dissolution of all areas involved in the composition, and color is used to create an overall effect of light. The color is, through such a shading down from the highest light in the deepest shadows, sacrified an degraded to a (black-and-white) function. This leads to the destructions of the color as color.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

Hofmann's quote in: 'Space pictorially realized through the intrinsic faculty of the colors to express volume' in New Paintings by Hans Hofmann (1951); also in Hans Hofmann (1998) by Helmut Friedel and Tina Dickey
1950s

Emil Nolde photo
Willem de Kooning photo
Louis-ferdinand Céline photo
Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
George William Curtis photo
Gino Severini photo

“I was interested in achieving a creative freedom, a style that I could express with Seurat's.... color technique [color-divisionism], but shaped to my own needs. Proof that I found it is in my paintings of that period, among which is the famous 'Pan-Pan a Monico' [Severini painted in 1912]. My preference for Neo-Impressionism dates from those works. At times I tried to suppress it, but it always worked its way back to the surface.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 53; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003.

Raymond Chandler photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Margaret Cho photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Piet Mondrian photo
James Comey photo
Mirkka Rekola photo
Michelle Obama photo
El Lissitsky photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Jacoba van Heemskerck photo

“I work a lot and I think a lot. I really want to try to paint on glass.. Please will you ask him [mr. architect Taut ] if there are any transparent colors, which one can use to paint on the glass directly... I want to dispose of a new technique in which the artist can paint on the glass directly instead of canvas. When one wants to reach colors spiritually-bright, then a time will come that oil-paint and canvas are no longer suitable... So, if you have time, please ask Mr. Taut if he understands my view and maybe he knows the ways how I can follow my direction.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:)Ich arbeite sehr viel und denke sehr viel. Ich möchte so gern versuchen, auf Glas zu mahlen. .. ..bitte fragen sie ihn dann [Herr Taut] ob es transparante Farbe gibt, womit man gleich auf Glas malen kann. .. ..ich möchte eine neue Technik haben, dass der Künstler so direkt das Glas verwenden kann statt Leinwand. Wenn man die Farben leuchtend geistlich haben will, dann wird es eine Zeit kommen, dass Oelfarben und Leinwand sich dafür nicht mehr eignen.. ..So wenn Sie Zeit haben, fragen Sie dann Herrn Taut ob er meine Idee versteht und vielieich den Weg kennt, den ik gehen müsse.
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 11 Nov. 1914; as cited by Arend H. Huussen Jr. in Jacoba van Heemskerck, kunstenares van het Expressionisme, Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 1982, p. 19
It was not until April 1918 that Jacoba wrote Walden she had decided to submit a series of designs for stained glass windows for the upcoming 'Sturm' exhibition - in April 1919 she sent him ten stained-glass windows, 'Nrs. 12-26'
1910's

Robert F. Kennedy photo
Fernand Léger photo

“Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Terms' p. 74
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Auguste Rodin photo
James A. Garfield photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“I hope.... to paint some in a lighter gamut, more flesh and blood, but, at the same time, I am trying to get a still stronger soft soap and copper-like effect. In reality I daily see, in the gloomy huts, effects against the light or in the evening twilight.... which I compare to soft soap and brass color of a worn-out 10 centime piece.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, June 1885; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 410) p. 31
1880s, 1885

John Ireland (bishop) photo
Paul Gauguin photo
Salmon P. Chase photo

“True democracy makes no enquiry about the color of skin, or the place of nativity, whereever it sees man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights.”

Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) Chief Justice of the United States

Address accepting a testimonial of gratitude from the colored people of Cincinnati for the advocacy in the case of Samuel Watson (February 12, 1845).

Billy Joel photo
John Crowley photo