Salvador Dali Quotes

A true artist is not one who is inspired,
but one who inspires others.

You have to systematically create confusion,
it sets creativity free.
Everything that is contradictory creates life

Each morning when I awake,
I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali.

Great wine requires a mad man to grow the vine,
a wise man to watch over it,
a lucid poet to make it,
and a lover to drink it.

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

I am not strange.
I am just not normal.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.

Surrealism is destructive,
but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature.
Never try to correct them.
On the contrary: rationalize them,
understand them thoroughly.
After that,
it will be possible for you to sublimate them.

Everything alters me,
but nothing changes me.

The fact I myself do not understand what my paintings mean while I am painting them does not imply that they are meaningless.

I do not take drugs.
I am drugs.

There comes a moment in every person's life when they realise they adore me.

Now sexual obsessions are the basis of artistic creation.
Accumulated frustration leads to what Freud calls the process of sublimation.
Anything that does not take place erotically sublimates itself in the work of art

There is only one difference between a madman and me.
The madman thinks he is sane.
I know I am mad.

So little of what could happen does happen.

Life is too short to remain unnoticed

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook.
At seven I wanted to be Napoleon.
And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

You know the worst thing is freedom.
Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity.
You know,
Dali spent two months in jail in Spain,
and these two months were the most enjoyable and happy in my life.
Before my jail period,
I was always nervous,
anxious.
I didn't know if I should make a drawing,
or perhaps make a poem,
or go to the movies or the theatre,
or catch a girl,
or play with the boys.
The people put me in jail,
and my life became divine.
Tremendous!

I don't do drugs.
I am drugs.

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real,
the most brilliant.

I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought,
it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.

The famous soft watches are nothing else than the tender,
extravagant,
solitary,
paranoic-critical camembert oftime and space.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

The true painter must be able,
with the most usual things,
to have the most unusual ideas.

If you refuse to study anatomy,
the arts of drawing and perspective,
the mathematics of aesthetics,
and the science of color,
let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than of genius.

Those who do not want to imitate anything,
produce nothing.

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture.

If you understand a painting beforehand,
you might as well not paint it.

Don't bother about being modern.
Unfortunately it is the one thing that,
whatever you do,
you cannot avoid.

Knowing how to look is a way of inventing.

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature,
understand them thoroughly.

Give me two hours a day of activity,
and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject,
rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

Let my enemies devour each other.

The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes its secrets

Since I don't smoke,
I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health.
However,
I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which,
instead of tobacco,
were carefully placed several mustaches,
Adolphe Menjou style.
I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?" Nobody dared to touch them.
This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches.

Take me,
I am the drug;
take me,
I am hallucinogenic.

The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images.

To be interesting,
one has to provoke.

And now the announcement of Watson and Crick about DNA.
This is for me the real proof of the existence of God.

Picasso is a painter,
so am I;
Picasso is Spanish,
so am I;
Picasso is a communist,
neither am I.

Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life,
let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating,
on condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul - let my unformed childhood soul,
as it ages,
assume the rational and esthetic forms of an architecture,
let me learn just everything that others cannot teach me,
what only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin!

Qui sait déguster ne boit plus jamais de vin,
mais goûte des secrets

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society,
it is a good thing,
if you possess great talent,
to give,
early in your youth,
a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love.
After that,
be a snob.

The problem with the youth of today' is that one is no longer part of it.