“Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.”

Since man’s highest mission on earth is to spiritualize everything, it is his excrement in particular that needs it most.

Life is too short to remain unnoticed.

Geniuses must never die, the progress of mankind depends on us.

All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.

Everything alters me, but nothing changes me.

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.

God is just another artist, like me.

People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings.

The two greatest strokes of luck that can happen to a painter are (1) to be Spanish, (2) to be called Dali.

The famous soft watches are nothing else than the tender, extravagant, solitary, paranoic-critical camembert oftime and space.

We are children of God, and the entire universe tends towards the perfection of mankind.

Paranoiac-critical activity makes the world of delirium pass onto the plane of reality.

Nothing proves the truth of surrealism so much as photography. The Zeiss lens has unexpected faculties of surprise!

The true painter must be able, with the most usual things, to have the most unusual ideas.

It is mostly with your blood, Gala that I paint my pictures

I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and Senators and Congressmen and Government officials but the voters of this country.

To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.

The real safeguard of democracy is education.

Campaign promises are – by long democratic tradition – the least binding form of human commitment.

All democracies turn into dictatorships – but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.

The virtue of a democratic system with a [constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech] is that it readily enables the people, over time, to be persuaded that what they took for granted is not so, and to change their laws accordingly.

If we care about universal principles such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law, we cannot leave them to the care of market forces; we must establish some other institutions to safeguard them.

[If critics of the Pledge of Allegiance persuaded the public it should be changed] then we could eliminate under God from the Pledge of Allegiance, that could be democratically done.