“All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis.”

In a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power.

The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of art for art’s sake than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore – and then there will be time enough for art.

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.

I just put on what the lady says. I’ve been married three times, so I’ve had lots of supervision.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.

I don’t know whether anyone will care to examine my heart, but if they do, they will find two words there- ‘social justice.’ For that is what I have believed in and fought for.

But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.

Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure – such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.

I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

You can’t make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it.

Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid.

The remedy [for the Great Depression] is to give the workers access to the means of production, and let them produce for themselves, not for others, . . . the American way.

Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse.

The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.

In the twilight, it was a vision of power.

You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.

A still small voice spake unto me, ‘Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.

I can look at a fine art photograph and sometimes I can hear music.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart.