Quotes by Pablo Picasso

• The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.
• The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
• The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
• The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.
• The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.
• The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.
• Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
• The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
• The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?
• The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face.
• Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.
• Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
• Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.
• Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
• Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.
• Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.
• Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
• There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats.
• You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
• Sculpture is the art of the intelligence.
• What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.
• One must act in painting as in life, directly.
• All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
• Youth has no age.
• You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.
• Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.
• Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?
• When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.
• Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.
• What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.
• There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
• We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.
• We don't grow older, we grow riper.
• We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.
• To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.
• To draw you must close your eyes and sing.
• To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.
• They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.
• When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.
• Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
• One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail.
• Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.
• Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
• Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
• Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.
• Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create.
• Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
• Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
• Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
• God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephantand the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
• Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
• Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.
• Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.
• Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
• Action is the foundational key to all success.
• An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.
• Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?
• Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.
• If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
• My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.
• Love is the greatest refreshment in life.
• It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
• It takes a long time to become young.
• It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
• Everything you can imagine is real.
• Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.
• He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.
• If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
• If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur.
• I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
• I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
• I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!
• I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.
• I do not seek. I find.
• I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.
• I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
• Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?
• Embrace the chaos within you, for out of disorder comes creativity.
• The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
• The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.
• Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, life cannot exist without a spark of madness.
• Embrace the imperfections, for that is where true beauty lies.
• I do not seek, I find.
• Everything you can imagine is real
• Do not wait for inspiration. Start working and let inspiration find you along the way.
• Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth
• Every masterpiece was once a work in progress.
• Action is the foundational key to all success
• If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
• Embrace the glorious mess that you are; perfection is overrated anyway.
• Life is like a huge canvas—don't use a tiny brush!
• Life is like a ten-speed bicycle; most of us have gears we never use.
• Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources just enough to make it all about you.
• Action may not always bring success, but there is no success without action!
• Imagination is the best tool in the workshop of life; with it, you can design both masterpieces and [mismatched IKEA shelves](#%@ into unstoppability.
• Creativity is contagious; pass it on like a paint-spattered virus!
• Creativity is the only empire that never falls.
• Life is like a blank canvas; get messy, throw some paint, and create your masterpiece!
• Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources *under* layers of fantastic new layers.
• Creativity is contagious; pass it on—want to turn some Sunday blues into a paintbrush weekend?
• Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources, and has worked for countless artists, scientists, and politicians alike!
• Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources, while intelligence is taking tequila to flush the memories.
• Everything you can imagine is real, unless your imagination can't perforate the boundaries of your reality.
• Creativity means to search for the unlikely places to destroy mere ‘moyen’.
• Life is a canvas, and every moment is your brushstroke; so paint wisely, unless you're aiming for abstract!
• Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources with style.
• Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources while boldly stealing a little inspiration here and there!
• Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources and still make a masterpiece.