Salvador Dali – Surreal Quotes – Burning Elephants on stilts dripping ants!

Salvador Dali – Surreal Quotes – Burning Elephants on stilts dripping ants!

Magritte is my favourite surrealist but Dali comes a close second. I was greatly affected by the madness of his work – not only impressively painted but incredibly original and weird. They shook me.

The man himself was just a weird and became a surreal parody of himself. Art, films, fashion, sculptures and performance. It was all surreal.

Seems closer to reality to me than reality.

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.
Just do it!
I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.
We all are! The chemistry in our heads is what we manipulate.
Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.
You’ve got to want to create – desperately want to create – not to achieve – certainly not to profit – but because you are full of it and it needs to come out. Do it and fly!
Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.
I feel the same – except I’m not Salvador Dali!
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
You start with imitation but then give vent to yourself.
The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad.
But I am. We all need a bit of madness. To not be a little mad is to be boring, dull and ordinary.
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.
That’s what Donald did!
Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.
We need something to knock us out of the ruts we make for ourselves.

Even more quotes – Robin Williams

Even more quotes – Robin Williams

Robin was not only a comedian!

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.

This is something I believe. I don’t go along with the ones who say there is nothing we can do – there’s no point in trying. I don’t believe that. It is always worth trying right up until you roll over dead. What else is there? You try your hardest to put things right. That’s why I write and blog! If I was younger I’d be out with Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion!

A woman would never make a nuclear bomb. They would never make a weapon that kills – no, no. They’d make a weapon that makes you feel bad for a while.

You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.

I miss him too! What a sad end to someone so full of life.

Sigmund Freud Quotes – Psychoanalysis of the psychos!

Sigmund Freud Quotes – Psychoanalysis of the psychos!

Freud does throw a lot of light on the human condition. He is well worth thinking through – a very bright man!

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America is a mistake, a giant mistake.

It was founded on a religious fanaticism (that still persists and blinds people to progress) and was built on genocide, racism, slavery and violence (that still persists). USA USA – so tribal!!

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.

Every civilisation has its day. Why should Americans think they are better or deserve more than anybody else?

I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

If by trash he means selfish, greedy and stupid then I would agree. I prefer animals. People are too deceitful and untrustworthy.

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.

Poetry is the essence of truth.

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

Will we ever become civilised? Doesn’t look like it. People like their hatred and violence too much. They want to ‘Make America Great’ and be ‘Strong’ instead of a helping hand and compassion/equality.

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

Freud said that religion is a mass delusion. We dearly want to live forever, fear death and want to live in some wonderful place with our loved ones forever. We want some parent in the sky to love us and look after us. It seems childish to me. We want something that doesn’t exist.

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
To recognise your own motives is the first step towards understanding life. We can then go forward.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
We read too much into things.
We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.
Love hurts.
The ego is not master in its own house.
We are not in control of ourselves.
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
Sheeples follow the sheep. They like to be ordered around. They like strong leaders who tell them what to do and what to think. It takes the pressure off them. I think for myself!
Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
that’s life!!!
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.
They might be back to burning people again soon!
One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
We’ve got to have a purpose – something worth fighting for! If you are out of step with the whole world but believe in what you stand for – fight for it!
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.
That’s why we keep voting for these psychopaths – they are black and white father-figures! We want them to protect us and make everything right! Unfortunately they are selfish, greedy, megalomaniacal and mad. We never learn.

P J Harvey Quotes – A Lady with intellect!

P J Harvey Quotes – A Lady with intellect!

I first heard the fabulous P J with her powerful Sheela Na Gig. What a song!! She had that visceral power that I get with some Patti Smith stuff. Dry – what an album!

You can hear the Beefheart!

I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I’m myself, and if I don’t, then I give nothing.

I do that too. I have to meet them face to face.

Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.

I’m a role model.

My mother and father are very involved with music. It’s completely part of their soul. They have an incredible record collection, all vinyl, of some of the best artists, in my eyes, that you can come across.

A record collection is as important as food.

People like Howlin’ Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart – all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there’s a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

All that’s missing is the Roy Harper, Elmore James, Phil Ochs, Doors, Eels ………..

I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It’s to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It’s also full of many wonderful things and love and hope.

I still cling to the love and hope. It will win over the hate.

I’ve always felt that I’m affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other.

Me too. We could be so much better. We never learn.

Well, I don’t really concern myself too much with what other people make of my work.

You can’t. You write for yourself. You share it in hope. Ultimately you are your own judge.

If you would like to purchase my books on Rock Music here’s a few:
In the UK:
In the USA –

Lenny Bruce Quotes – A real pathfinder for future comedy. He talked about real issues.

Lenny Bruce Quotes – A real pathfinder for future comedy. He talked about real issues.

Lenny Bruce could have had a great career. He was very funny. He could have played safe, performed on TV and toed the line.

He couldn’t do that. It was too soulless. He wanted something more than that. He wanted to deal with real issues. He wanted fulfilment. He became a counter-culture figure. But back in the late fifties and early sixties it was hard to talk about sex, religion and drugs. Society was extremely prudish and censorship ruled. He found himself increasingly coming into conflict and ended up being blacklisted and prosecuted. The stress created huge health problems but he still refused to shut up.

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Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
America runs on the church. Everybody goes. It was the whole system. When we went to live in the States and told our neighbours that we didn’t do religion they were genuinely shocked. I thought we would be excommunicated but we weren’t. Lenny recognised the difference between spirituality and religion. The hypocrisy of many church-goers was obvious.
In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
The law is often an ass. It is used to persecute some people.
The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.
Conservatism is in a blinkered rut.
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
I thought that was hilarious when I first heard it.
There are never enough ‘I love you’s’.
Never enough.
The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be,’ there is only what is.
But we do have to try to make it better, don’t we?
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it… try to fake three laughs in an hour – ha ha ha ha ha – they’ll take you away, man. You can’t.
I think there are other art forms but I know what he means.
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
I think things have changed.

Pablo Picasso Quotes – A driven man with passion and creativity.

 

Pablo Picasso Quotes – A driven man with passion and creativity.

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I love a lot of Picasso’s art but it is the passion of the man that inspired me most. He had a lust for life, boundless energy and a desire not to waste a second. He was driven by his desire to create.

That is something that I feel most intensely. Whatever the end result I have a drive to keep creating. That is my fundamental purpose. I gave up a well-paid fulfilling job early so that I had time and energy to devote to my creativity. It certainly wasn’t the money. I know I will never make money out of my creativity in the way I did out of my profession. It is an overwhelming need. I sense that in Picasso.

Whether it is writing, painting, dance, music or any other form of creativity – I feel that it is fundamental to a healthy human being’s life.

Action is the foundational key to all success.

Don’t just think it – do it!

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

We truly come alive when we are creating – our brains zing.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

I hope I’ve retained some of that naivety. I don’t want to get bogged down in the mundane. Life is wondrous.

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

That’s not easy – you fail so often. I fail every single day. The art is to keep trying.

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

A work of art is never completed – Only abandoned.

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.

I was fortunate – I chose teaching as a career. It put me in daily touch with lively young minds and I loved trying to make them think and create. I enjoyed my career and miss it.

Everything you can imagine is real.

I’ve created whole universes.

We don’t grow older, we grow riper.

I think he’s right. I’m better than I used to be. I merely lack the energy.

Quotes – Jerry Rubin – The other Radical Sixties Revolutionary!

Quotes – Jerry Rubin – The other Radical Sixties Revolutionary!

Jerry was the Yippie revolutionary who loved attention, used theatre and took on the whole capitalist war-machine that is still gobbling up the planet – then he sold out and opted in!
It was fun while it lasted and it pointed out some truths about the greed and stupidity that is running this planet!
Don’t trust anyone over thirty.
That’s a worry! I’m over thirty! But I never did trust myself too much!
Most men act so tough and strong on the outside because on the inside, we are scared, weak, and fragile. Men, not women, are the weaker sex.
That’s why men buy guns, play with fast cars and motorbikes and have to show off so much!
By the end, everybody had a label — pig, liberal, radical, revolutionary … If you had everything but a gun, you were a radical but not a revolutionary.
We love to put people in pigeon-holes!
Exactly!! Your life is a statement of your philosophy! Be positive and change the world.
My life is a revolution.
I would be copping out if I stayed in the myth of the ’60s.
But the sixties gave me the fuel!

Woody Guthrie Quotes – A man who was a unique individual.

Woody Guthrie Quotes – A man who was a unique individual.

Woody is one of my heroes. He stood for fairness and justice. He stood against racism and supported the poor and exploited. Woody exemplified the Protest song that gave rise to Bob Dylan and the sixties rebellion against the establishment.

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Some men rob you with a six-gun — others rob you with a fountain pen.

The bankers and the politicians who support them have robbed the whole world. The people who hold power and pull the strings, who control the inequality and war in order to create profit, rob everyone. The system is corrupt. For someone to earn in 45 minutes more than an average man can earn from all the hard work of a full year is simply wrong.

The world is filled with people who are no longer needed — and who try to make slaves of all of us — and they have their music and we have ours.

Those people who hold the power have created a system that takes from the bottom and gives to the top. The inequality is obscene. There has to be more fairness and justice.

The best way to get to know any bunch of people is to go and listen to their music.

Music is a universal language. It transcends words.

There’s several ways of saying what’s on your mind. And in states and counties where it ain’t too healthy to talk too loud, speak your mind, or even vote like you want to, folks have found other ways of getting the word around. One of the mainest ways is by singing.

Woody sung his truth – about justice and freedom – on picket lines – to the unions and people being exploited.

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that.

We are all human and should be treated with compassion. Racism, sexism and inequality need addressing.

Love is the only medicine I believe in.

He sound like Jose Mujica the Uruguayan President who said that the only good addiction is love.

A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it or it could be
who’s hungry and where their mouth is or
who’s out of work and where the job is or
who’s broke and where the money is or
who’s carrying a gun and where the peace is.

These are the songs we need more of. We need songs about real issues – there’s enough soppy love songs.

You can’t write a good song about a whorehouse unless you’ve been in one.

Woody had not only been in the whorehouses, he’d been on the road, he’d been down and out. He knew what it was like.

The words are the important thing. Don’t worry about tunes. Take a tune, sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you’ve got a new tune.

The words are the important thing.

Bill Hicks Quotes

Bill Hicks Quotes

Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.
That is a great idea, isn’t it? We’ll wake up soon as someone else.
I don’t mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that’s how it comes out.
I don’t often feel like that but sometimes, when I look at what we are doing to the world, the cruelty, thoughtlessness, selfishness and greed, I get to feel angry and sad.
Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
It destroys our creativity!
We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.
If you don’t think drugs have done good things for us, then take all of your records, tapes and CD’s and burn them.
I get a kick out of being an outsider constantly. It allows me to be creative.
Me too.
It’s always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it’s just hilarious.
Why is it that we get pleasure out of other peoples’ pain?
Children are smarter than any of us. Know how I know that? I don’t know one child with a full time job and children.
They have it easy!
I live in love, in laughter, and in truth, and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.
That’s a bit like Steinbeck, isn’t it – the words of Tom Joad

John Cooper Clarke Quotes – The Punk Poet speaks!

John Cooper Clarke Quotes – The Punk Poet speaks!

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Nobody has quite the mouth that Dr John has. It’s an incessant stream that can bring tears. Here’s a few:

You can count on him. He’ll always let you down.

So many people that is true of.

Poverty – the one thing money can’t buy

To convey one’s mood
in seventeen syllables
is very diffic

As they used to say on Stingray, ‘Anything can happen in the next half hour’. I’ve always tried to live with that thought in mind.

With charm you’ve got to get up close to see it; style slaps you in the face.

Increasingly, I have to deal with bereavement. I could go to five funerals a week. But that many vol au vents is not good for you.