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page 84

“Might not the spirit of creative art, desperately needed by man, lie in the proper use of the radical new technologies of our times, and so arise?”

“This drift toward quantity instead of quality is largely distortion. Conformity is always too convenient? Quality means individuality, is therefore difficult. But unless we go deeper now, quantity at expense to quality will be our national tragedy—the rise of mediocrity into high places.”

“Servility increases—already a seemingly unguarded danger to democracy not only in art and architecture and religion but in all phases of life.”

“Between the radical and the conformist lies all the difference between a lithe tendon and a length of gas-pipe.”

“See the last chapter in Genesis where Cain, the murderer of his brother, went forth with his sons to found the city. The City is still murdering his brother.”

“I then believed critics were by nature no less confused than confusing.”

“Thus the plausible expedient has become gospel and continues to be generally foisted upon those who seek better things; the conformities proclaimed by authority, however specious, temporarily mistaken for Godhead.”

“In every new expression of a fundamental Idea there will always be the substitutes, the imitations, dangling from it, as the soiled fringe from a good garment.”

“Almost all our so-called "modern" is not yet new. It is merely novel by imitation or indirection; or pretense by imported picture.”

“Is false abstraction always the consequence of spiritual degeneration?”

“Creation is not only rare but always hazardous. Always was.”

“As a people we remain comparative strangers to our own life in our own time in our own home: native culture waiting in vain on our door step.”

“For this, if for no other reason, degeneration of creative ability in America has had ample support, and what nobility our society might still have is in danger of being submerged in overwhelming tides of rising conformity.”

“Reform only means more conformity. It is form first that is needed.”

“The soul of any civilization on earth has ever been and still is Art and Religion, but neither has ever been found in commerce, in government of the police.”

“Votes are counted. Yes—but vision can neither be counted nor discounted.”

“Both Art and Religion are on the way. Both must go hand in hand as ever before. Both together illuminating our sciences will constitute the soul of this civilization.”

“Even though a disgrace, machine-made, ornament stayed and still thrives.”

“No jealousy is comparable to professional jealousy.”