“Politics has been called the “art of the possible,” and it actually is a realm akin to art insofar as, like art, it occupies a creatively mediating position between spirit and life, the idea and reality.”
Speech at the US Library of Congress (29 May 1945); published as "Germany and the Germans" ["Deutschland und die Deutschen"] in Die Neue Rundschau [Stockholm] (October 1945), p. 58, as translated by Helen T. Lowe-Porter
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Thomas Mann 159
German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate 1875–1955Related quotes

Letter to John F. Kennedy (2 March 1962), printed in Galbraith's Ambassador's Journal (1969)

Quote of Mondrian, 1914 from Wikipedia; as cited by Michel Seuphor, in 'Piet Mondrian: Life and Work;Abrams, New York, 1956, p. 117
1910's
“To me, art has always been a fun way to be creative.”
Hopkinton Center for the Arts show delivers excitement and skill https://web.archive.org/web/20190504184619/https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/entertainment/20180211/hopkinton-center-for-arts-show-delivers-excitement-and-skill (February 11, 2018)

Gustav Metzger: 'Destroy, and you create', 2012

“Politics is the art of the possible.”
Franklin says this line in the HBO miniseries John Adams, but it is actually a quote of Otto von Bismarck.
(de) Die Politik ist die Lehre vom Möglichen. Interview (11 August 1867) with Friedrich Meyer von Waldeck of the St. Petersburgische Zeitung: Aus den Erinnerungen eines russischen Publicisten. 2. Ein Stündchen beim Kanzler des norddeutschen Bundes.
In: Die Gartenlaube (1876) p. 858 de.wikisource. Reprinted in Fürst Bismarck: neue Tischgespräche und Interviews, Vol. 1, p. 248 http://books.google.com/books?id=UpUBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA248&dq=%22die+Politik+ist+die+Lehre+vom+Möglichen%22
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Otto von Bismarck / Quotes / 1860s
Misattributed
Source: "Anselm Kiefer and the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger" Matthew Biro, Cambridge University Press 1998, p. 304

“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”

“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”
L'art n'est pas une étude de la réalité positive; c'est une recherche de la vérité idéale.
La Mare au Diable, ch. 1 (1851); Frank Hunter Potter (trans.) The Haunted Pool (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1895) p. 15