“When I have to think about it, I know the picture is wrong. And sizing is a form of thinking and coloring is too. My instinct about painting says, 'If you don’t think about it, it's right'. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it's wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets. Some people, they paint abstract, so they sit there thinking about it because their thinking makes them feel they're doing something. But my thinking never makes me feel I'm doing anything.”

— Andy Warhol

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 149

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Andy Warhol 133

American artist 1928–1987

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“When I have to think about it, I know the picture is wrong. And sizing is a form of thinking and coloring is too. My instinct about painting says, 'If you don’t think about it, it's right.'”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

As soon as you have to decide and choose, it's wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets. Some people, they paint abstract, so they sit there thinking about it because their thinking makes them feel they're doing something. But my thinking never makes me feel I'm doing anything.
Source: 1970s, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 149

“To me, Pollock is the height of American painting. It's very lyrical. Gorky, who is very passionate, can copy a drawing or take a drawing and copy it exactly as a painting, and Miro can too, it's amazing. Miro can do a drawing to paint and that's another training in a sense. So there's a certain mannerism that comes in both of them [three], and probably everything becomes obvious in time. But I don't have that. The line is illustrated or the colour. I'm sure it has great feeling when they're doing it, but it's more towards defining something. It has a certain clarity because it's a complex thing. I'm a painter and my whole balance is not having to think about things. So all I think about is painting. It's the instinct for the placement where all that happens. I don't have to think about it. So I don't think of composition; I don’t think of colour here and there. Sometimes I alter something after. So all I could think is the rush... I cannot make a picture unless everything is working. It's like a state.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 179

“Something is wrong with America. I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about or if they're thinking at all.”

Bob Dole (1923) American politician

Reported in Tom Crisp, The Book of Bob: Choice Words, Memorable Men (2007), p. 113.

“I have this kind of philosophy that I can't do anything about what happened yesterday, or what's going to happen tomorrow. But I feel in full control of what's going on now. I think worry will make you sick. I've never seen it accomplish anything. I've never seen worrying about anything change it. So I decided not to do it. If you can't do anything about it, why in the hell worry about it? Every negative thought you have releases poison into your system, and will kill you or give you cancer, or tumors or whatever else you can think of. So if you are thinking negative about anything, erase that.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Willie Nelson On Eggs, Martial Arts & Living A Life Without Worry, Southern Living, Lifestyle Network, January 2017, February 22, 2017 http://www.southernliving.com/culture/celebrities/willie-nelson-interview-video,

“Unless the person is aiming upward, there is nothing you can do about their situation. And this seems to be about that initial choice between good and evil. Once someone comes to therapy, they've already done something. They've already said: I have a problem, conceivably I can fix it, and I need to do something about it. And so half the work is already done before they show up, because they've already said that 'things aren't as good as they could be, and I want to do something about it.' The question is, can you do anything about that person who is not at that state? You can't. All you can do is serve by example. But until the person has decided, on their own, that they're wrong (that's why they're suffering – there's something wrong about what they are doing) and that they want to fix it… I think that hammering against their situation often makes it worse. That's part of free will. I do not think that people can learn unless they admit that they're wrong.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

“I think about you
And you think about me
I'm thinking what my name is
I have amnesia
I don't even know you
I need my memory back”

Maia Mitchell (1993) Australian actress

My Memory Has Changed

“I believe that one should not think so much about nature when painting, at least not during the conception of the picture. Make the color sketch exactly as one has felt something in nature. But my personal feeling is the main thing. Once I have established it, lucid in tone and color, I must bring in from nature the things that make my painting seem natural, so that a layman will only think that 1 have painted it from nature.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

quote from her Diaries, 1 October, 1902; as cited 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. 31
1900 - 1905

“… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

“There is in American society, not only the the American society but more here than anywhere else, what I have come to call the official syllogism and this is a set of assumptions that we have about well-being and about how society should be organized that runs so deep that I think we don't realize we make them. And the only time you start to notice that you make them is when you can start to accumulate evidence that they are wrong. So what is this official syllogism?First, we all think that the more freedom people have, the more welfare they have. How could you think otherwise? This is [a] no-brainer. What argument could you make to suggest that there is anything wrong with this assumption?The second thing we think is that the more choice people have, the more freedom they have. What does freedom mean if not choice?”

Barry Schwartz (1946) American psychologist

The Paradox of Choice, Google TechTalks http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200# (April 27, 2006)

“You don't paint the way someone, by observing his life, thinks you have to paint, you paint the way you have to in order to give. That's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. The question about knowing will naturally be wrong. When you've finished giving, the look surprises you as anyone else. Some painters talking about painting are like a lot of kids dancing at a prom. An hour later you are too shy to get out on the floor.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Evergreen Review, 1958

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