Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 214
Context: The military art is not an accomplishment, an art for dilettante, a sport. You do not make war without reason, without an object, as you would give yourself up to music, painting, hunting, lawn tennis, where there is no great harm done whether you stop altogether or go on, whether you do little or much. Everything in war is linked together, is mutually interdependent, mutually interpenetrating. When you are at war you have no power to act at random. Each operation has a raison d'etre, that is an object; that object, once determined, fixes the nature and the value of the means to be resorted to as well as the use which ought to be made of the forces.
“In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.”
“What can art accomplish? The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being.”
Speech at the Nobel Banquet https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/alexievich-speech_en.html (10 December 2015)
Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), P. 108
Dilettanten haben nicht einmal in einer sekundären Kunst etwas Bleibendes geleistet, sich aber verdient gemacht um die höchste aller Wissenschaften, die Philosophie. Den Beweis dafür liefern: Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 55.
“Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.”
2000s, The Powell Principles (2003)
Maciunas (1963), Fluxus Manifesto, copies of which were thrown into the audience at the Festum Fluxorum Fluxus, Düsseldorf, February 1963.
Source: Homage to the square' (1964), A conversation with Josef Albers' (1970), p. 459
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/975693.Helen_Rowland
Other
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: In a world populated by people who believe that through more and more information, paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is king. But I maintain that all of this is a monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and energy. Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education? Who knows what we could learn from such people — perhaps why there are wars, and hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and anger.
