Surrealism Quotes

• Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

  John Lennon

  Inspirational, Motivational, Reality

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• Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

  Salvador Dali

  Photography, Vision, Shackles

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• Surrealism! What is Surrealism? In my opinion, it is above all a reawakening of the poetic idea in art, the reintroduction of the subject but in a very particular sense, that of the strange and illogical.

  Paul Delvaux

  Art, Ideas, Opinion

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• Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all

  Nikolai Gogol

  Perfect, Goes On, World

  Nikolai Gogol (2011). “The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol”, p.323, Vintage

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• Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

  John Lennon

  Love, Life, Happiness

  Sunday Herald Sun (Australia), January 13, 2003.

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• Surrealism is the magical surprise of finding a lion in a wardrobe, where you were 'sure' of finding shirts.

  Frida Kahlo

  Art, Lions, Surprise

  Frida Kahlo, Carlos Fuentes (2008). “Frida Kahlo: National Homage 1907-2007”, Editorial Rm Rio Panuko

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• I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.

  Andre Breton

  Dream, Believe, Reality

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• To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been.

  Rene Magritte

  Mean, Remembrance, Mind

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• Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.

  Andre Breton

  Subjects, Objects, Surround

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• In an age of computer manipulation, surrealism has become banal, a shadow of its former self.

  Milton Glaser

  Technology, Self, Shadow

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• The mind which plunges into Surrealism, relives with burning excitement the best part of childhood.

  Andre Breton

  Childhood, Mind, Burning

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• Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was.

  John Lennon

  Reality, Vision, Psychedelic

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• I don't do drugs. I am drugs.

  Salvador Dali

  Life, Hipster, Epic

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• Surrealism runs through the streets.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Running, Streets

  "The Yellow Trolley Car in Barcelona, and Other Visions". Interview with William Kennedy, www.theatlantic.com. January 1973.

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• They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.

  Frida Kahlo

  Dream, Reality, Portraits

  Frida Kahlo (1978). “Frida Kahlo, 1910-1954: an exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago”

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• 

  Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

  Salvador Dali

  Inspirational, Motivational, Art

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• Surrealism will usher you into death, which is a secret society. It will glove your hand, burying therein the profound M with which the word Memory begins.

  Andre Breton

  Memories, Love You, Hands

  "First Manifesto of Surrealism". Book by Andre Breton, 1924.

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• Surrealism is based on the belief in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought.

  Andre Breton

  Dream, Omnipotence, Play

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• Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.

  Andre Breton

  Real, Independent, Writing

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• Surrealism can only deliver a reactionary judgment; can make out of history only an accumulation of oddities, a joke, a death trip.

  Susan Sontag

  Oddities, Judgment, Accumulation

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.68, Macmillan

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• What is admirable about the fantastic is that there is no longer anything fantastic: there is only the real.

  Andre Breton

  Real, Fantastic, Admirable

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• There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

  Salvador Dali

  Life, Happiness, Happy

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

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• It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

  Andre Breton

  Existence, Elsewhere, Surrealist

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• Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

  Andre Breton

  Mean, Psychics, Moral

  "First Manifesto of Surrealism". Book by Andre Breton, 1924.

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• My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments.

  Ian Hornak

  Ideas, Perfect, Everyday

  The 57th Street Review, January 1976.

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