“The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.”

“The one place for art-as-art is the museum of fine art. The reason of the museum or fine art is the preservation of ancient and modern art that cannot be made again and that does not have to be done again. A museum of fine art should exclude everything but fine art, and be separate of museums of ethnology, geology, archaeology, history... Any disturbance of a true museum's soundlessness, timelessness, airlessness, and lifelessness is a disrespect.”

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”

“The weak are more likely to make the strong weak than the strong are likely to make the weak strong.”

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”

“Every innovation scraps its immediate predecessor and retrieves still older figures – it causes floods of antiques or nostalgic art forms and stimulates the search for museum pieces.”

“Weak emperors mean strong viceroys.”

“It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.”

“Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

“The history of human progress is a story of emancipation, and its course has by no means been run. The future of the race is in all likelihood to be a scientific future, since science gives the truth needed in actual life and furnishes the means for advance, every achievement enlarging the field of subsequent possibilities. Nothing can stop this growth except suppressions of freedom.”