“Archeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so early that they were without art.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: Archeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so early that they were without art. Right back in the early morning twilights of mankind we received it from Hands which we were too slow to discern. And we were too slow to ask: FOR WHAT PURPOSE have we been given this gift? What are we to do with it?
And they were mistaken, and will always be mistaken, who prophesy that art will disintegrate, that it will outlive its forms and die. It is we who shall die — art will remain. And shall we comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets and all its possibilities?

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 28, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Archeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so early that they were without art." by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn120

Russian writer 1918–2008

Related quotes

“Zoocentricism, that stage of solidarity in which the entire sentient universe is contemplated, universal consideration and love, is as yet too difficult for human consciousness. Human philosophy, which has been so slow in discovering the solidarity of the human species, is to-day, except in its Oriental manifestations, as reluctant to recognize other species in its ethical contemplations as were dominant human groups in less advanced stages of aggregation reluctant to recognize the solidarity of the hominine species.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, p. 144

“Early Christian art during the first two or three centuries of its existence was merely a development or even a variant of late Roman art. So great is the similarity between late pagan and early Christian work that the decisive change of style must have occurred between the classical and post-classical, not between the pagan and Christian eras.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages

“Of course one could claim that the human embryo or fetus is not (yet) a human being, but that's just science-denial. Or one could claim that human beings in early developmental stages don't have dignity but that is a denial that dignity is inherent and that all humans are equal.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

Twitter post https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/941035451904856064 (13 December 2017) <br class="br">2017

“Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“Throughout their early stages the movements of civilization—for, properly speaking, there was no one movement—were very slow, were local in space, and were partial in the sense that each developed along but few lines. Of the numberless years that covered these early stages we have no record. They were the years that saw such extraordinary discoveries and inventions as fire, and the wheel, and the bow, and the domestication of animals. So local were these inventions that at the present day there yet linger savage tribes, still fixed in the half-bestial life of an infinitely remote past, who know none of them except fire—and the discovery and use of fire may have marked, not the beginning of civilization, but the beginning of the savagery which separated man from brute.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The World Movement (1910)

“It is almost always impossible to get the fascist party together without using some anti-capitalist slogans, in the early stages at any rate, of the necessary propaganda. And this type of propaganda may have so coloured the minds of the rank and file of the Fascist party as to make them difficult adequately to control.”

John Strachey (1901–1963) British politician and writer (1901-1963)

Source: The Coming Struggle for Power (1932), p. 262

“If the world were clear, art would not exist.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation

“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist”

René Magritte (1898–1967) Belgian surrealist artist

“Art can never exist without Naked Beauty displayed.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Laocoön
1800s

“The first application of this principle [of the division of labor] must have been made in a very early stage of society; for it must soon have been apparent that more comforts and conveniences could be acquired by one man restricting his occupation to the art of making bows, another to that of building houses, a third boats, and so on. This division of labor Into trades was not, however, the result of an opinion that the general riches of the community would be increased by such an arrangement: but it must have arisen from the circumstances, of each individual so employed discovering that he himself could thus make a greater profit of his labour than by pursuing more varied occupations.”

Charles Babbage On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

Source: On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 1832/1841, p. 170. Ch 19. "On the division of labour"

Related topics