Distortion Quotes

• I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.

  Henry Moore

  Art, Struggle, Giving

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• I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.

  Yohji Yamamoto

  Inspirational, Failure, Thinking

  "Talking to Myself (The Past, the Feminine, the Vain)". Book by Yohji Yamamoto and Kiyokazu Washida, 2002.

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• Distortion upon distortion: . . . the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.

  Laozi

  Confused, Confusion, Confusing

  Laozi, Brian Browne Walker (1992). “Hua Hu Ching: Teachings of Lao Tzu”

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• Reality is captured in the categorical nets of Language only at the expense of fatal distortion.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Reality, Language, Expenses

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• Art is the distortion of an unendurable reality... Art is correction, modification of a situation; art is communication, connection... Art is social, self-sufficient, and total.

  Jean Tinguely

  Art, Communication, Reality

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• There needs to be understanding that anger never helps to solve a problem. It destroys our peace of mind and blinds our ability to think clearly. Anger and attachment are emotions that distort our view of reality.

  Dalai Lama

  Wise, Wisdom, Peace

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• We must not confuse distortion with innovation; distortion is useless change, art is beneficial change.

  Chuck Jones

  Art, Confusion, Innovation

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• The ego says, I shouldn't have to suffer, and that thought makes you suffer so much more.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Ego, Suffering

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.73, Penguin

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• Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Names, Hypocrisy, Religion

  Mahatma Gandhi (1946). “Daridra-Narayana: Edited & Published by Anand T. Hingorani”

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• There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.

  John Steinbeck

  Texas, Confusion, Prejudice

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• What the ordinary person means by a 'miracle' is some gross distortion or suspension of the laws of nature... but life itself strikes him as commonplace, when in truth a blade of grass or a neuron in the brain is a greater miracle.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Mean, Law, Miracle

  Sydney J. Harris (1976). “Best of Sydney J. Harris”

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• Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beautiful, Mirrors, Poetry

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.33

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• We must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected" and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.

  T. S. Eliot

  Believe, Numbers, Atmosphere

  "Reading Prose: An Introduction to Critical Study". Book by T. S. Eliot (p. 505), 1952.

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• Monsters exist because we create them, through war and violence, and distortion, and the way we handle people and so on.

  Leon Golub

  War, People, Monsters

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• Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture.

  David Bohm

  Real, Learning, Knowledge

  David Bohm, Mark Edwards (1991). “Changing consciousness: exploring the hidden source of the social, political, and environmental crises facing our world”, Harpercollins

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• Everything that we see in our daily lives is more or less distorted by acquired habits and this is perhaps more evident in an age like ours when cinema posters and magazines present us every day with a flood of ready-made images which are to the eye what prejudices are to the mind. The effort to see things without distortion demands a kind of courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he were seeing it for the first time.

  Henri Matisse

  Eye, Artist, Effort

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.218, Univ of California Press

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• When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.

  Walter Lippmann

  Truth, Honesty, Simple

  Walter Lippmann (1955). “Essays in the Public Philosophy”, p.25, Transaction Publishers

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• It's not only imagination, it's the distortion of the vision. You suddenly think, "This person is idealistic, this person is strong, this person has dreams", when you know better most of the time. You put what you want to see on people.

  Olivier Martinez

  Dream, Strong, Thinking

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Believe, People, Crafts

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.79, Macmillan

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• To probe for unconscious determinants of behavior and then define a man in their terms exclusively, ignoring his overt behavior altogether, is a greater distortion than ignoring the unconscious completely.

  Willard Gaylin

  Men, Behavior, Term

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• The un-conscious distortion of the facts is almost harmless compared to the unconscious neglect of an animal's mental life until it verges on the unusual and marvelous.

  Edward Thorndike

  Animal, Facts, Mental Health

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• It's not enough to be compassionate. You must act.

  Dalai Lama

  Diversity, Enough, Rectify

  Dalai Lama XIV (2009). “Worlds in Harmony: Compassionate Action for a Better World: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.109, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Dance, Children, Attitude

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone, Thomas Gray (1798). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knight ... Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting”, p.88

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• I first came to think about media and politics in the late 1960s, having observed some distortions up close, but since then I wouldn't say that my personal experience has remained an important motive for my writing about media.

  Todd Gitlin

  Writing, Thinking, Media

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• Make-believe colors the past with innocent distortion, and it swirls ahead of us in a thousand ways - in science, in politics, in every bold intention.

  Shirley Temple

  Inspirational, Believe, Past

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