“Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report?”
Address at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (9 June 1957).
Context: Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.
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Alfred Whitney Griswold 8
American historian 1906–1963Related quotes
“Could only have been painted by a madman.”
his inscription, written in pencil, between the red clouds on at least one of his paintings of The Scream (c. 1893 - 1910), as quoted in Edvard Munch: The Man and His Art (1977) by Ragna Thiis Stang, p. 106
after 1930
You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (1966) "Introduction"
“What worthwhile book after the Pentateuch has been written by a committee?”
Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 6 (p. 36).
Umberto Pettinicchio late interview https://www.shantimandir.eu/la-spiritualita-oltre-liconarelazione-umberto-pettinicchio/, La spiritualita’ oltre l’icona, shantimandir.eu, 2001.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
“The reports of my death have been greatly understated.”
from "Message from Morrissey," True To You http://true-to-you.net/morrissey_news_130131_01 (31 January 2013). Twist on a quote by Mark Twain.
In interviews etc., About life and death
Source: Expiration Date (1995), Chapter 6 (p. 44)
“It is the only one in existence that might conceivably have been composed by God.”
Of Mozart's "The Magic Flute"; Manchester Guardian (1961)