“Now I ask you whether you yourself have not often noticed that the policy of floating between the old and the new is not tenable? Just think this over. Sooner or later it ends with one's standing frankly either to the right or to the left.
It is no ditch, and I repeat, then it was '48 [the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, ] now it is '84 [1884]; then there was a barricade of paving stones - now it is not of stones, but a barricade as to the incompatibility of old and new.”

—  Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, Autumn 1884; 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 381) p. 38
1880s, 1884

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 "Now I ask you whether you yourself have not often noticed that the policy of floating between the old and the new is no…" by Vincent Van Gogh?
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Vincent Van Gogh 238
Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853–1890

Related quotes

José Martí photo

“Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stones.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1881)
Context: Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stones.
There is no prow that can cut through a cloudbank of ideas. A powerful idea, waved before the world at the proper time, can stop a squadron of iron-clad ships, like the mystical flag of the Last judgement.

Donald Rumsfeld photo

“Now, you're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

As quoted in "Outrage at 'old Europe' remarks" in BBC News (23 January 2003) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2687403.stm
2000s

Steve Jobs photo

“And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2005-09, Address at Stanford University (2005)
Context: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

A. C. Grayling photo

“Ideas are the cogs of history—and too often the barricades that stand in its way.”

A. C. Grayling (1949) English philosopher

Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 58, “Philosophy” (p. 230)

“Early man recognised these lines of force and marked them out on the landscape with, well, any old thing, really—standing stones, ditches, mounds, tumps, sacred wells, and that sort of thing. And, later on, with churches, market crosses, crossroads, and whatnot.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Skin Map (2010), p. 20

Robert Mitchum photo

“I usually take no notice of reviews unless a critic has thought up some new way of describing me. That old one about the way I sleep my way through pictures is so hackneyed now.”

Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) American film actor, author, composer and singer

As quoted in "Kate and Deborah Disagree" https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SBS19821031.1.97&srpos=1&e=31-10-1982-31-10-1982--en--20--1--txt-txIN-%22I+usually+take+no+notice+of+reviews%22-------1

Howard Bloom photo

“When you repeat an old pattern in a new location, you sometimes make something new.”

Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author

Brace Yourself: The Five Heresies
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)

Robert M. Pirsig photo

“I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. "What's new?"”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?," a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and "best" was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 1

José Martí photo

“Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stones.
There is no prow that can cut through a cloudbank of ideas. A powerful idea, waved before the world at the proper time, can stop a squadron of iron-clad ships, like the mystical flag of the Last judgement.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1891)

Related topics