M. C. Escher Quotes

Quotes about:

• Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.

  M. C. Escher

  Art, Thinking, Impossible

  126 Copy quote

• We adore chaos because we love to produce order.

  M. C. Escher

  Inspirational, Life, Order

  74 Copy quote

• Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?

  M. C. Escher

  Art, Reality, Ceilings

  "On Being a Graphic Artist" by M. C. Escher, 1981.

  96 Copy quote

• Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the boderline between the two respective domains.

  M. C. Escher

  Education, Art, Jigsaw Puzzles

  77 Copy quote

• I never got a pass mark in math ... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books.

  M. C. Escher

  Education, Book, Math

  78 Copy quote

• Order is repetition of units.
  Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm.

  M. C. Escher

  Order, Chaos, Repetition

  57 Copy quote

• My work is a game, a very serious game.

  M. C. Escher

  Art, Work, Games

  72 Copy quote

• It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say.

  M. C. Escher

  Believe, Artist, Ideas

  "On Being a Graphic Artist" by M. C. Escher, 1981.

  65 Copy quote

• He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.

  M. C. Escher

  Life, Knowledge, Discovery

  47 Copy quote

• Hands, are the most honest part of the human body, they cannot lie as laughing eyes and the mouth can.

  M. C. Escher

  Lying, Eye, Hands

  71 Copy quote

• Originality is merely an illusion.

  M. C. Escher

  Originality, Illusion

  57 Copy quote

• I can't keep from fooling around with our irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure knowingly to mix up two and three dimensionalities, flat and spatial, and to make fun of gravity.

  M. C. Escher

  Fun, Two, Example

  "On Being a Graphic Artist" by M. C. Escher, 1981.

  65 Copy quote

• I don't grow up. In me is the small child of my early days.

  M. C. Escher

  Children, Growing Up, Grows

  11 Copy quote

• I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.

  M. C. Escher

  Dream, Drug Use, Alcohol

  50 Copy quote

• What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.

  M. C. Escher

  Life, Beautiful, Artist

  53 Copy quote

• Wonder is the salt of the earth.

  M. C. Escher

  Earth, Salt, Wonder

  58 Copy quote

• Although I am even now still a layman in the area of mathematics, and although I lack theoretical knowledge, the mathematicians, and in particular the crystallographers, have had considerable influence on my work of the last twenty years. The laws of the phenomena around us--order, regularity, cyclical repetition, and renewals--have assumed greater and greater importance for me. The awareness of their presence gives me peace and provides me with support. I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems.

  M. C. Escher

  Beautiful, Years, Law

  59 Copy quote

• I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity.

  M. C. Escher

  Beautiful, Fun, Two

  "Escher on Escher: exploring the infinite". Book by J. W. Vermeulen, H. N. Abrams, 1989.

  72 Copy quote

• So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen.

  M. C. Escher

  Stars, Space, Trying

  63 Copy quote

• Simplicity and order are, if not the principal, then certainly the most important guidelines for human beings in general.

  M. C. Escher

  Order, Simplicity, Important

  12 Copy quote

• I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems.

  M. C. Escher

  Beautiful, Trying, World

  "Escher on Escher: exploring the infinite". Book by J. W. Vermeulen, H. N. Abrams, 1989.

  36 Copy quote

• If I am not mistaken, the word "art" and "artist" did not exist during the Renaissance and before: there were simply architects, sculptors, and painters, practicing a trade.

  M. C. Escher

  Art, Renaissance, Architect

  12 Copy quote

• I might be in the basement. I'll go upstairs and check.

  M. C. Escher

  Might, Upstairs, Checks

  10 Copy quote

• Drawing is deception.

  M. C. Escher

  Art, Drawing, Deception

  21 Copy quote

• A woman once rang me up and said, 'Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print -Reptiles- you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.' I replied, 'Madam, if that's the way you see it, so be it.'

  M. C. Escher

  Crazy, Illustration, Reptiles

  10 Copy quote

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