52 Quotes by Rene Magritte

Do not accept any explanation of the world either through chance or determinism. You are not responsible for your belief. It is not even you who decides that you are not responsible – and so on to infinity. You are not obliged to believe. There is no point of departure.

A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows.

Painting bores me like everything else. Unfortunately, painting is one of the activities – it is bound up in the series of activities – that seems to change almost nothing in life, the same habits are always recurring.

I think we are responsible for the universe, but that doesn’t mean we decide anything.

An object never serves the same function as its image – or its name.

It is not my intention to make anything comprehensible. I am of the opinion that there are sufficient paintings which one understands after a shorter or longer delay, and that therefore some incomprehensible painting would now be welcome. I am at pains to deliver such, as far as possible.

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.