“Life is more important than art — quantity is only important in that the amount of activity is greater not the number of works.”
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Patrick Swift 60
British artist 1927–1983Related quotes
“A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.”
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever — why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan — if he wanted us all to believe alike?
After all, maybe Nature is good enough and grand enough and broad enough to give us the diversity born of liberty. Maybe, after all, it would not be best for us all to be just the same. What a stupid world, if everybody said yes to everything that everybody else might say.
The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.
“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”
Source: On Suicide
“The activity of art is… as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.”
What is Art? (1897)
“The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.”
As quoted in Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much (1993) by Jonathon Lazear and Wendy Lazear, p. 5.
14 June 1853
Correspondence, Letters to Madame Louise Colet
“Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”
"An interview with James Baldwin" (1961)
Context: You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.
“All equally truthful: number 1 is not more or less important than 35.”
1990s
A Guide for the Perplexed