Quotes about fashion
page 9

Susie Castillo photo

“I've been an animal lover all my life, and the more I learned of the torture that animals go through in the name of fashion, I just think it's so unnecessary; it's unbelievable to me. I’m blessed to team up with my pageant sisters to take a united stand and to tell the pageant industry not to support the fur industry.”

Susie Castillo (1979) MTV VJ, Miss USA 2003

"Miss Universe official promises surprises that could shake up the whole show", LasVegasSun.com (13 June 2013) https://m.lasvegassun.com/vegasdeluxe/2013/jun/13/miss-nevada-official-promises-surprises-could-shak/.

Albert O. Hirschman photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“1579. Fools may invent Fashions, that wise Men will wear.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Similarly in French: Les fous inventent les modes et les sages les suivent.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Smarmy, plastic, oily, greasy, unctuous, shallow, superficial, old-fashioned, superannuated, crap”

Bob Monkhouse (1928–2003) English entertainer

Summing up opinions of him
Obituary in The Independent http://web.archive.org/web/20100507114758/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bob-monkhouse-549171.html

Alfred Stieglitz photo

“I know exactly what I have photographed [in his series 'Equivalents', 1925 - 1934]. I know I have done something that has never been done... I also know that there is more of the really abstract in some 'representation' than in most of the dead representations of the so-called abstract so fashionable now.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

In a letter about his 'Equivalents' to w:Hart Crane; as quoted in Photography as High Art, Hilton Kramer, (1982-12-19)., in 'New York Times'. p. 1. Retrieved 2008-12-26; as quoted on Wikipedia.

Marsden Hartley photo

“The essential of a real picture is that the things which occur in it occur to him in his peculiarly personal fashion.... the idea of modernity is but a new attachment of things universal – a fresh relationship to the courses of the sun and to the living swing of the earth – a new fire of affection for the living essence present everywhere.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

statement for catalogue of 1914 exhibition at 291, reprinted in On art, p. 62; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 49
1908 - 1920

Jorge Luis Borges photo
José Ortega Y Gasset photo
Charles Lindbergh photo
Mo Yan photo
Harry Schwarz photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism is combined with absorption in the narrowest forms of practical activity.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter One, Section D, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)

Louis Pasteur photo
James E. Lovelock photo
Anna Sui photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“All very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

James A. Michener photo
Hubert Reeves photo
Anna Sui photo

“It's kind of a dream come true, because to me fashion is not just the clothes, it's all the accoutrements that go with it…”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

CBS News Interview (March 8, 2009)

Thomas Carlyle photo
Gore Vidal photo
John Gray photo
Justin D. Fox photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“.. As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new kingdom (of Armenia) - from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia - the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods and chattels in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the new grant Sultan. the new 'city of Tigranes", Tigranocerta, situated in in the most southern province of Armenia, not far from the Mesopotamian frontier, was a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high, and the appendages of palace, garden and park that were appropriate to sultanism In other respects, too, the new great king proved faithful to his part. As amidst the perpetual childhood of the East the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed himself in public, appeared in the state and costume of a successor of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple fagtan, the half white half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban, and the royal diadem - attended moreover and served in slavish fashion, wherever he went or stoood, by four "kings."”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Chapter 2 Pg. 47 - "Rule of the Sullan Restoration" Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Victor Davis Hanson photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
Iain Banks photo
David M. Buss photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Neil Gaiman photo

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Friedrich Engels photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

““Whether there can be love without esteem?” Oh yes, thou dear, pure one! Love is of many kinds. Rousseau proves that by his reasoning and still better by his example. La pauvre Maman and Madame N____ love in very different fashions. But I believe there are many kinds of love which do not appear in Rousseau’s life. You are very right in saying that no true and enduring love can exist without cordial esteem; that every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any noble soul. One word about pietism. Pietists place religion chiefly in externals; in acts of worship performed mechanically, without aim, as bond-service to god; in orthodoxy of opinion; and they have this among other characteristic marks, that they give themselves more solicitude about other’s piety than their own. It is not right to hate these men,-we should hate no one, but to me they are very contemptible, for their character implies the most deplorable emptiness of the head, and the most sorrowful perversion of the heart. Such my dear friend never can be; she cannot become such, even were it possible-which it is not-that her character were perverted; she can never become such, her nature has too much reality in it. You trust in Providence, your anticipation of a future life, are wise, and Christian. I hope, I may venture to speak of myself, that no one will take me to be a pietist or stiff formalist, but I know no feeling more thoroughly interwoven with my soul than these are.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Johann Fichte Letter to Johanna Rahn from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's popular works: Memoir and The Nature of the Scholar<!--pp. 14-15--> https://archive.org/stream/johanngottlieb00fichuoft#page/14/mode/1up

H.L. Mencken photo
C. D. Broad photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

January 5, 1856
Journals (1838-1859)

W. S. Gilbert photo
Philip Warren Anderson photo

“My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance.”

Philip Warren Anderson (1923) American physicist

[New York Times, 2005-01-04, God (or Not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take a Leap, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5090&en=ce9bddb9581db4d9&ex=1262581200&partner=rssuserland, 2006-08-22]
Anderson was describing his dislike for "string theory".

Mary Parker Follett photo
Karen Blixen photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“The fashion of this world passeth away and I would fain occupy myself with the things that are abiding.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Quoted in the Preface to The Works of Francis Rabelais (1931), Albert Jay Nock and Catherine R. Wilson (Eds.)
Attributed

Otto Neurath photo
Logan Pearsall Smith photo
Frederick Douglass photo
George Eliot photo
Christian Dior photo

“I know very well the women. The short skirt was never a good fashion — very vulgar. The American women will accept the new fashions. You can never stop the fashions.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

Source: Malcolm Perrine McNair, ‎Harry L. Hansen (1949) Problems in Marketing. p. 165

Arun Shourie photo
Georges Seurat photo
Wesley Clair Mitchell photo

“One seeking to understand the recurrent ebb and flow of economic activity characteristic of the present day finds these numerous explanations both suggestive and perplexing. All are plausible, but which is valid? None necessarily excludes all the others, but which is the most important? Each may account for certain phenomena; does any one account for all the phenomena? Or can these rival explanations be combined in such a fashion as to make a consistent theory which is wholly adequate?
There is slight hope of getting answers to these questions by a logical process of proving and criticizing the theories. For whatever merits of ingenuity and consistency they may possess, these theories have slight value except as they give keener insight into the phenomena of business cycles. It is by study of the facts which they purport to interpret that the theories must be tested. But the perspective of the investigation would be distorted if we set out to test each theory in turn by collecting evidence to confirm or to refute it. For the point of interest is not the validity of any writer's views, but clear comprehension of the facts. To observe, analyze, and systematize the phenomena of prosperity, crisis, and depression is the chief task. And there is better prospect of rendering service if we attack this task directly, than if we take the round about way of considering the phenomena with reference to the theories.
This plan of attacking the facts directly by no means precludes free use of the results achieved by others. On the contrary, their conclusions suggest certain facts to be looked for, certain analyses to be made, certain arrangements to be tried. Indeed, the whole investigation would be crude and superficial if we did not seek help from all quarters. But the help wanted is help in making a fresh examination into the facts.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

Source: Business Cycles, 1913, p. 19-20; as cited in: Mary S. Morgan. The History of Econometric Ideas. p. 46

Alyssa Campanella photo
Titian photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Mao Zedong photo

“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Source: (zh-CN) 百花齐放、百家争鸣的方针,是促进艺术发展和科学进步的方针,是促进我国的社会主义文化繁荣的方针。艺术上不同的形式和风格可以自由发展,科学上不同的学派可以自由争论。利用行政力量,强制推行一种风格,一种学派,禁止另一种风格,另一种学派,我们认为会有害于艺术和科学的发展。艺术和科学中的是非问题,应当通过艺术界科学界的自由讨论去解决,通过艺术和科学的实践去解决,而不应当采取简单的方法去解决。

Justin D. Fox photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Lewis Mumford photo
Marc Jacobs photo

“It’s almost the not-knowing that’s sexy. When the look is too contrived… Trying to assimilate a look to be sexy to me is pretty transparent in the first place. So… somebody who just kind of stumbles into a sexy look… who’s not been thinking about fashion at all…”

Marc Jacobs (1963) American fashion designer

Jonkers, Gert (2003). "Friendly homosexual fashion designer likes dogs but finds fashionable men terribly unsexy" http://www.buttmagazine.com/Issues/7_Jacobs.html buttmagazine.com (accessed April 19, 2007)
On clothes and sex

Michel Foucault photo
Heidi Klum photo

“I learned from working in the fashion world that if I have a day when I feel slapped in the face, or if someone has been mean, I just have to get back up and it will be another day. I think about what I'm grateful for. I look at my kids and my husband and think, Wow, I'm a really lucky person.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

From Self Magazine http://www.self.com/healthystars/2010/12/heidi-klums-happy-healthy-life-slideshow#slide=1, December 2010

Thomas Carlyle photo

“Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high majestic Luther; and forthwith he sets about “accounting” for it; how the “circumstances of the time” called for such a character, and found him, we suppose, standing girt and road-ready, to do its errand; how the “circumstances of the time” created, fashioned, floated him quietly along into the result; how, in short, this small man, had he been there, could have per formed the like himself! For it is the “force of circumstances” that does everything; the force of one man can do nothing. Now all this is grounded on little more than a metaphor. We figure Society as a “Machine,” and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two, or at most ten, little minds must be stronger than one great mind. Notable absurdity! For the plain truth, very plain, we think is, that minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one man that has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto unknown spiritual Truth in him, is stronger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than all men that have it not; and stands among them with a quite ethereal, angelic power, as with a sword out of Heaven's own armory, sky-tempered, which no buckler, and no tower of brass, will finally withstand.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Ginger Stanley photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo

“The claim set up was nothing less than the right of a general superintendence of the states of Europe, and of the suppression of all changes in their internal government, if those changes should be hostile to what the Holy Alliance called the legitimate principles of government…Every reform of abuses, every improvement in government, which did not originate with a sovereign, of his own free will, was to be prevented. Were this principle to be successfully maintained, the triumph of tyranny would be complete, and the chains of mankind would be riveted for ever…He was one of those old-fashioned politicians who thought that every great political change might be traced to previous misgovernment…Let their lordships look to the revolution of 1688, and then he would ask them, if it could have been carried into effect without the combinations of those great men, who restored and secured our religion, our laws, and our liberties, and without such mutual communications among them as would bring them under the description of a sect or party?”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Lords (19 February 1821) on the debate on Naples. After the revolution in Naples in July 1820 the protocol which affirmed the right of the European Alliance to interfere to crush dangerous internal revolutions had been issued at the Congress of Troppau, October 1820. Parliamentary Debates, N.S. iv, pp. 744-59, quoted in Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock (ed.), The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 13-16.
1820s

Hans Blix photo

“There was a very consistent creation of a virtual reality, and eventually it collided with our old-fashioned, ordinary reality.”

Hans Blix (1928) Swedish politician

On the U.S. attitude regarding alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a justification for U.S. military action, as quoted widely in the media including the Boston Globe article "Newsview: U.S. reports no weapons in Iraq", September 18, 2004 http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/09/18/us_leaks_report_of_no_weapons_in_iraq?mode=PF

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“2968. It is in vain to mislike the current Fashion.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Johannes Grenzfurthner photo
Charlotte Salomon photo

“Fashion drawing teacher: 'Yes, drawing is a difficult art. One has to have some talent for it - and unfortunately you haven't.
Charlotte: 'No, I refuse to stay here with this stupid old cow, where through the dirty window even the sun's bright ray can only dimly play... Only he who dares can win. Only he who dares can begin.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

written text with brush, in her paintings JHM no. 4334 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004334/part/character/theme/keyword + 4335 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004335: in 'Life? or Theater..', p. 222-223
Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Emil Nolde photo

“.. colors are my notes for fashioning sounds and chords with and against one another.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

as quoted in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 35
3 short quotes in which Nolde expresses the evocative power of color, which became with his garden and flower paintings from 1906-07 the chief medium of his art.
undated quotes

Plutarch photo
Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“Into a slumber then I fell,
When fond imagination
Seemed to see, but could not tell
Her feature or her fashion.”

Anthony Munday (1560–1633) English playwright and miscellaneous writer

Poem Colin http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1527.html

Winston S. Churchill photo
Max Scheler photo

“"Another situation generally exposed to ressentiment danger is the older generation's relation with the younger. The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life. Those spiritual and intellectual values which remain untouched by the process of aging, together with the values of the next stage of life, must compensate for what has been lost. Only if this happens can we cheerfully relive the values of our past in memory, without envy for the young to whom they are still accessible. If we cannot compensate, we avoid and flee the “tormenting” recollection of youth, thus blocking our possibilities of understanding younger people. At the same time we tend to negate the specific values of earlier stages. No wonder that youth always has a hard fight to sustain against the ressentiment of the older generation. Yet this source of ressentiment is also subject to an important historical variation. In the earliest stages of civilization, old age as such is so highly honored and respected for its experience that ressentiment has hardly any chance to develop. But education spreads through printing and other modern media and increasingly replaces the advantage of experience. Younger people displace the old from their positions and professions and push them into the defensive. As the pace of “progress” increases in all fields, and as the changes of fashion tend to affect even the higher domains (such as art and science), the old can no longer keep up with their juniors. “Novelty‟ becomes an ever greater value. This is doubly true when the generation as such is seized by an intense lust for life, and when the generations compete with each other instead of cooperating for the creation of works which outlast them. “Every cathedral,” Werner Sombart writes, “every monastery, every town hall, every castle of the Middle Ages bears testimony to the transcendence of the individual's span of life: its completion spans generations which thought that they lived for ever. Only when the individual cut himself loose from the community which outlasted him, did the duration of his personal life become his standard of happiness.” Therefore buildings are constructed ever more hastily—Sombart cites a number of examples. A corresponding phenomenon is the ever more rapid alternation of political regimes which goes hand in hand with the progression of the democratic movement. But every change of government, every parliamentary change of party domination leaves a remnant of absolute opposition against the values of the new ruling group. This opposition is spent in ressentiment the more the losing group feels unable to return to power. The “retired official” with his followers is a typical ressentiment figure. Even a man like Bismarck did not entirely escape from this danger."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Oliver Sacks photo
Colin Wilson photo
James Burke (science historian) photo
Donald A. Schön photo

“Old questions are not answered—they only go out of fashion.”

Donald A. Schön (1930–1997) American academic

Schon (1971, 42) cited in: William G. Weissert, ‎Carol S. Weissert (2012) Governing Health: The Politics of Health Policy. p. 296

Frances Burney photo
Geoffrey of Monmouth photo

“After this, having invited over to him all persons whatsoever that were famous for valour in foreign nations, he began to augment the number of his domestics, and introduced such politeness into his court, as people of the remotest countries thought worthy of their imitation. So that there was not a nobleman who thought himself of any consideration, unless his clothes and arms were made in the same fashion as those of Arthur's knights.”
Tunc invitatis probissimis quibusque ex longe positis regnis, cepit familiam suam augmentare, tantamque facetiam in domo sua habere ita et emulationem longe manentibus populis ingereret. Unde nobilissimus quisque incitatus nichili pendebat se nisi sese sive in induendo sive in arma ferendo ad modo militum Arturi haberet.

Bk. 9, ch. 11; p. 239.
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

Anna Sui photo

“I'm always about optimism and exuberance. It's what I feel about fashion.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

via Borrelli-Persson, Laird. Spring 2010 Ready-to-Wear. Vogue (September 16, 2009). http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2010-ready-to-wear/anna-sui

John Gray photo
George Carlin photo
Carl von Clausewitz photo
Guity Novin photo
Edgar Degas photo
Alberto Manguel photo
Lin Yutang photo