93 Quotes by Herbert Read

Art is pattern informed by sensibility.

The greatest intensification of the horrors of war is a direct result of the democratisation of the State. So long as the army was a professional unit, the specialist function of a limited number of men, war remained a relatively harmless contest for power. But once it became everyman's duty to defend his home (or his political “rights”) warfare was free to range wherever that home might be, and to attack every form of life and property associated with that home.

Great changes in the destiny of mankind can be effected only in the minds of little children.

Simplicity is not a goal, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, as one approaches the real meaning of things.

The earliest records of our species point to group organizations - the primitive horde, nomadic tribes, settlements, communities, cities, nations.

And again I answer that it is only in the degree that the slave is emancipated and the personality differentiated that we can speak of progress.

Art is always the index of social vitality, the moving finger that records the destiny of a civilization. A wise statesman should keep an anxious eye on this graph, for it is more significant than a decline in exports or a fall in the value of a nation’s currency.

Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience – by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence.

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals – its philosophers, its poets and its artists.