“Dada is able to mobilize the optical and dimensional static viewpoint which keeps us imprisoned in our [three-dimensional] illusions. Thus it became possible t0 perceive the entire prism of the world instead of just one facet at a time. In this connection Dada is one of the strongest manifestations of the fourth dimension, transposed onto the subject.... Dada is 'yes-no', a bird on four legs, a ladder without steps, a square without angels. Dada possesses as many positives as negatives. To think that Dada simply means destruction is to misunderstand life, of which Dada is the expression.”

1916, Dada Manifesto (1916)

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 41, note 30

Quote in 'Silence: lectures and writings by Cage, John', Publisher Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan University Press, June 1961, x/SILENCE
1960s

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

Kosmos (1932)

Quote of Huelsenbeck, in 'Dada Lives', Transition no. 25 (Autumn 1936), as cited in The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, ed. Robert Motherwell (1951)

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 63
Context: Dada was given the Venus of Milo a clyster and has allowed the Laocoön and his sons to rest awhile, after thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage Python. The philosophers are of less use to Dada than an old toothbrush, and it leaves them on the scrap heap for the great leaders of the world.

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), p. 16

In first edition of the journal Merz, 1923.
1920s