It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae.

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what a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. hopeless rubbish.

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Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.

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The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.

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There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.

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Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

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There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place?

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Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

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To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth.

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Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

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