Salvador Dali Quotes

Quotes by and about Salvador Dali

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Dali: "I cannot understand why human beings should be so little individualized. Why they should behave with such great collective uniformity."

Dali: "I very early realized, instinctively, my life formula: to get others to accept as natural the excesses of one's personality and thus to relieve oneself of his own anxieties by creating a sort of collective participation."

Dali: "I was never capable of being an average pupil. I would either seem refractory to any teaching and give the impression of being completely dumb or I would fling myself on my work with a frenzy, a patience, and a willingness to learn that astonished everybody. But to awaken my zeal, it was necessary to offer me something I liked. Once my appetite had been whetted, I became ravenously hungry."

Dali: "I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work."

New York Times: "It was Salvador Dali, with his meticulous and persuasive visions of a world turned inside out, who brought home to the public at large the full potential of Surrealism. More than anyone else, he made his audience believe that nonsense could make the best sense."

New York Times: "Dali was not only an artist of intermittent substance but also a man whose wit, style, panache and readiness to take on all comers in conversation added to the gaiety of more than one capital city."

New York Times: "He had ... both an intuitive awareness of the way the world was going and the wit to say something memorable about it."

New York Times: "When asked for his opinions on art, Dali never failed to say something outrageous. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to make mock of current orthodoxies."

New York Times: "[He] needed an audience and responded to it. ... He gave interviews on every possible occasion, and no audience was too silly or too small. He was never at a loss for something startling to say, and quite often there was just enough truth in what he said to make it quotable."

Sigmund Freud: "I have been inclined to regard the Surrealists as complete fools, but that young Spaniard with his candid, fanatical eyes and his undeniable technical mastery has changed my estimate."