Distortion Quotes

• I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.

  Yohji Yamamoto

  Inspirational, Failure, Thinking

  "Talking to Myself (The Past, the Feminine, the Vain)". Book by Yohji Yamamoto and Kiyokazu Washida, 2002.

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• Distortion upon distortion: . . . the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.

  Laozi

  Confused, Confusion, Confusing

  Laozi, Brian Browne Walker (1992). “Hua Hu Ching: Teachings of Lao Tzu”

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• I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.

  Henry Moore

  Art, Struggle, Giving

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• Art is the distortion of an unendurable reality... Art is correction, modification of a situation; art is communication, connection... Art is social, self-sufficient, and total.

  Jean Tinguely

  Art, Communication, Reality

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• Reality is captured in the categorical nets of Language only at the expense of fatal distortion.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Reality, Language, Expenses

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• We must not confuse distortion with innovation; distortion is useless change, art is beneficial change.

  Chuck Jones

  Art, Confusion, Innovation

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• Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Names, Hypocrisy, Religion

  Mahatma Gandhi (1946). “Daridra-Narayana: Edited & Published by Anand T. Hingorani”

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• The ego says, I shouldn't have to suffer, and that thought makes you suffer so much more.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Ego, Suffering

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.73, Penguin

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• There needs to be understanding that anger never helps to solve a problem. It destroys our peace of mind and blinds our ability to think clearly. Anger and attachment are emotions that distort our view of reality.

  Dalai Lama

  Wise, Wisdom, Peace

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• Monsters exist because we create them, through war and violence, and distortion, and the way we handle people and so on.

  Leon Golub

  War, People, Monsters

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• The (method of) correction shall by a turn become distortion, and the good in it shall by a turn become evil.

  Laozi

  Evil, Method, Turns

  Colin Bradshaw-Jones, Laozi, Lao Tzu (2006). “The Tao Te Ching, Eighty-one Maxims from the Father of Taoism”, p.82, Lulu.com

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• It's not enough to be compassionate. You must act.

  Dalai Lama

  Diversity, Enough, Rectify

  Dalai Lama XIV (2009). “Worlds in Harmony: Compassionate Action for a Better World: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.109, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beautiful, Mirrors, Poetry

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.33

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• There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.

  John Steinbeck

  Texas, Confusion, Prejudice

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• What the ordinary person means by a 'miracle' is some gross distortion or suspension of the laws of nature... but life itself strikes him as commonplace, when in truth a blade of grass or a neuron in the brain is a greater miracle.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Mean, Law, Miracle

  Sydney J. Harris (1976). “Best of Sydney J. Harris”

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• Everything that we see in our daily lives is more or less distorted by acquired habits and this is perhaps more evident in an age like ours when cinema posters and magazines present us every day with a flood of ready-made images which are to the eye what prejudices are to the mind. The effort to see things without distortion demands a kind of courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he were seeing it for the first time.

  Henri Matisse

  Eye, Artist, Effort

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.218, Univ of California Press

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• We must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected" and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.

  T. S. Eliot

  Believe, Numbers, Atmosphere

  "Reading Prose: An Introduction to Critical Study". Book by T. S. Eliot (p. 505), 1952.

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• Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. "Things as they are" are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become "things as perceived by your wishes.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Divorce, Reality

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.791, Hamilton Books

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• In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and the stars is the distortion of space and time.

  Michio Kaku

  Stars, Moving, Space

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• Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture.

  David Bohm

  Real, Learning, Knowledge

  David Bohm, Mark Edwards (1991). “Changing consciousness: exploring the hidden source of the social, political, and environmental crises facing our world”, Harpercollins

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• A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.

  Fawn M. Brodie

  Memories, Past, Men

  "No Man Knows My History". Book by Fawn M. Brodie, Ch. 19, 1945.

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• Everyone in the Chinese economic world knows that the country is not going to move out of cheap-workhouse status, toward the realm of 'real' rich-country corporate power and prosperity, unless (among other changes) it begins removing these price distortions.

  James Fallows

  Country, Real, Moving

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• Language is a serious weapon in shining and sharing Truth. It is also a serious weapon used in its distortion.

  Suzy Kassem

  Shining, Weapons, Serious

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• When something needs to be done in the world to rectify the wrongs, if one is really concerned with benefiting others, one needs to be engaged, involved. This is action out of compassion.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Compassion, Needs

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• 'The Night Cafe' and 'The Starry Night' still emit such pathos, density, and intensity that they send shivers down the spine. Whether Van Gogh thought in color or felt with his intellect, the radical color, dynamic distortion, heart, soul, and part-by-part structure in these paintings make him a bridge to a new vision and the vision itself.

  Jerry Saltz

  Heart, Night, Color

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