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

  127 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

• 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

• We adore chaos because we love to produce order.

  M. C. Escher

  Inspirational, Life, Order

  74 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

• 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

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

  M. C. Escher

  Art, Work, Games

  73 Copy quote

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

  M. C. Escher

  Life, Knowledge, Discovery

  48 Copy quote

• Originality is merely an illusion.

  M. C. Escher

  Originality, Illusion

  58 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

• 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.

  66 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 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 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

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

  M. C. Escher

  Might, Upstairs, Checks

  11 Copy quote

• Drawing is deception.

  M. C. Escher

  Art, Drawing, Deception

  21 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

• To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by the concept of 'art'. What one person considers to be 'art' is often not 'art' to another. 'Beautiful' and 'ugly' are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only 'kitsch' is not art - we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is 'kitsch'? If only I knew!

  M. C. Escher

  Beautiful, Hurt, Art

  29 Copy quote

• There is something in such laws that takes the breath away. They are not discoveries or inventions of the human mind, but exist independently of us. In a moment of clarity, one can at most discover that they are there and take them into account. Long before there were people on the earth, crystals were already growing in the earth's crust. On one day or another, a human being first came across such a sparkling morsel of regularity lying on the ground or hit one with his stone tool and it broke off and fell at his feet, and he picked it up and regarded it in his open hand, and he was amazed.

  M. C. Escher

  Spiritual, Lying, Discovery

  26 Copy quote

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