Dilettantes Quotes

• I stare at myself in the mirror and I think, 'Wow, I'm really great-looking.'... I think I'm the greatest, anyway.

  Iggy Pop

  Thinking, Mirrors, Wow

  "Iggy's Trail of Destruction". Rolling Stone interview, November 19, 2003.

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• And it's a - it's a term that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll.

  Iggy Pop

  Fashion, Rocks, Style

  "When you hear what Iggy Pop told CBC in 1977, it's no wonder he's still rocking today" by Leah Collins, www.cbc.ca. March 11, 2016.

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• What distinguishes the artist from the dilettante? Only the pain the artist feels. The dilettante looks only for pleasure in art.

  Odilon Redon

  Art, Pain, Looks

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• Well, I am a dilettante. It's only in England that dilettantism is considered a bad thing. In other countries it's called interdisciplinary research.

  Brian Eno

  Country, Research, England

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• Data is what distinguishes the dilettante from the artist

  George V

  Artist, Data

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• Of course, [Adolf] Hitler was a dilettante, but he was a completely amoral person. Yes, he had no morals at all.

  Manfred Rommel

  Moral, Persons, Courses

  Source: archives.nbclearn.com

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• The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human.

  Alain de Botton

  Greek, Rewards, Leisure

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• The cat is a dilettante in fur.

  Theophile Gautier

  Cat, Fur

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

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• Could one count such dilettantes and old spinsters as that mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainlander, as a genuine German? In the last analysis he probably was a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralize).

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lasts, Analysis, Spinsters

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1974). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, Vintage

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• This study is not for the amateur. It's not for the dilettante. It's not for the cult follower. It's not for someone who wants everything done for them. It's not for the one who just wants to stare with that fixed dog-like devotion towards the teacher.

  Frederick Lenz

  Dog, Teacher, Buddhist

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• There is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt; service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. From the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honor; all have their part to play.

  Winston Churchill

  Men, Play, Honor

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• Choosing individual stocks without any idea of what you're looking for is like running through a dynamite factory with a burning match. You may live, but you're still an idiot.

  Joel Greenblatt

  Funny, Running, Ideas

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• Every artist was first an amateur.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.119, Harvard University Press

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• In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante.

  Edith Wharton

  Happiness, World, Littles

  Edith Wharton (2016). “A Backward Glance”, p.113, Edith Wharton

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• Punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it.

  Iggy Pop

  Heart, Men, Rocks

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

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• Our hypothetical rich client might even have ordered a Pommard, because it was listed at a higher price...He would have never learned [about other wines]. A man who is rich in his adolescence is almost doomed to be a dilettante at table. This is not because all millionaires are stupid but because they are not impelled to experiment.

  A. J. Liebling

  Stupid, Wine, Men

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• I have a very, very secret drive to become a dilettante, without the pejorative overtones or the obligation to produce myself. There's so much to examine, so much to contemplate. I have enormous enthusiasm when I start a new project but then there's the meetings and the counter-meetings, the rehearsals, the struggles. You have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get your dreams realised.

  Peter Greenaway

  Dream, Struggle, Secret

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• Life must be something more than dilettante speculation.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Speculation

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.194, Rowman & Littlefield

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• In a world where you are constantly asked to be 'committed,' it is liberating to give yourself the license to be a dilettante. Commit to nothing. Try everything.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Giving, Trying, World

  Tom Hodgkinson (2006). “How to be Free”

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• I never thought, "I'm going to be an artist". When I actually began to become successful in the art world I made it a point to say, 'I am a dilettante, I am not a professional artist", which is true.

  Yoko Ono

  Art, Successful, World

  Source: interviewswithicons.wordpress.com

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• In order to write about the machine you have to know it, to live with it, to love it (or hate it). I think that true writing could be done on industrial subjects by people who work in industry, who are firmly linked with it. But ... and here is the opposite 'but', the technology of literary craftsmanship is itself a very fine and complex matter. Qualified specialists from industry prove themselves dilettantes in the field of literature. The needed synthesis is not yet in sight.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Hate

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• And dilettantism is a humorous way to survive. Everybody understands you for it and everybody hates you for it. And not everybody chooses to be a dilettante. Many choose cunning and brute force.

  Francesco Clemente

  Hate, Humorous, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much.

  John Darnielle

  Worry, Knows

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I'm a dilettante by temperament. I don't have any expectation.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Expectations, Temperament

  "The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Aleksandar Hemon". Interview with Rachel Dewoskin, therumpus.net. April 14, 2013.

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• One cannot enter don Juan's world intellectually, like a dilettante seeking fast and fleeting knowledge. Nor, in don Juan's world, can anything be verified absolutely. The only thing we can do is arrive at a state of increased awareness that allows us to perceive the world around us in a more inclusive manner.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Knowledge, Intelligent, Fleeting

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