Hey there, art lovers and curious minds! Are you ready to dive deep into the colorful, chaotic, and brilliant world of Pablo Picasso?
I’ve gathered 176 of pablo picasso’s most inspiring quotes that reveal the genius behind the masterpieces.
Picasso wasn’t just about Cubism and crazy creativity; his words offer a treasure trove of wisdom on life, art, and everything in between.
Whether you’re an artist looking for a spark, or just someone who loves a good quote, you’re in the right place.
Get ready to see the world through Picasso’s eyes and let his words inspire your next big idea.
Here are the most inspirational Pablo Picasso quotes
1. “I’m Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together.”
2. “Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.”
3. “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”
4. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
5. “Everything you can imagine is real.”
6. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
7. “It takes a long time to become young.”
8. “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
9. “The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.”
10. “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”
11. “Action is the foundational key to all success.”
12. “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”
13. “Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”
14. “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
15. “He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”
16. “It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”
17. “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
18. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
19. “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
20. “Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.”
21. “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”
22. “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
23. “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
24. “The older you get, the stronger the wind gets – and it’s always in your face.”
25. “Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No.”
26. “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”
27. “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
28. “If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse… but surely you will see the wildness!”
29. “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”
30. “The first half of life is learning to be an adult—the second half is learning to be a child.”
31. “There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”
32. “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
33. “We don’t grow older, we grow riper.”
34. “The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.”
35. “One must act in painting as in life, directly.”
36. “Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”
37. “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 most unfortunate and hard blow.”
38. “To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.”
39. “Every positive value has its price in negative terms… the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.”
40. “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
41. “I do not seek. I find.”
42. “I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.”
43. “I don’t believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.”
44. “I paint as if some blind man was looking over my shoulder.”
45. “If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.”
46. “In art, there is only one thing that counts: the thing you cannot explain.”
47. “It is not what the artist does that counts, but what he is.”
48. “It took me a lifetime.”
49. “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.”
50. “Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly impostors.”
51. “My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”
52. “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.”
53. “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”
54. “Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.”
55. “Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself. And to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”
56. “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place.”
57. “The world today doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”
58. “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward, you can remove all traces of reality.”
59. “To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.”
60. “We have a misfortune that our minds have wings, but our bodies do not.”
61. “What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician?”
62. “What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face?”
63. “What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing.”
64. “You mustn’t always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.”
65. “You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.”
66. “What is necessary to paint well? The importance of an artist is to be able to survive as an artist.”
67. “We must be vigilant, even against our own subconscious thoughts.”
68. “Art is the most effective mode of communication that exists.”
69. “Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”
70. “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
71. “Give me a museum, and I’ll fill it.”
72. “Art is the most beautiful of all lies.”
73. “I do not believe I have ever painted a dream.”
74. “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”
75. “I am the child who is born out of the incestuous marriage of art and money.”
76. “Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous.”
77. “Give me a forum, and I’ll give you a controversy.”
78. “It’s not what you paint but how you paint it.”
79. “The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.”
80. “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”
81. “A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions.”
82. “I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.”
83. “When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.”
84. “When art critics get together, they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”
85. “You must not be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes are never a crime in art.”
86. “You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression.”
87. “It is not up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise, it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”
88. “Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”
89. “Give me some mud and I will paint you a picture of a woman.”
90. “There is no such thing as a mistake in art.”
91. “A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.”
92. “Every positive value has its price in negative terms. The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.”
93. “The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.”
94. “The one thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.”
95. “One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite – that particular peach is but a detail.”
96. “The more I paint, the more I like everything.”
97. “Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.”
98. “What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter someday, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.”
99. “You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression.”
100. “Sculpture is the art of the intelligence.”
101. “I am only an entertainer who has understood his time.”
102. “Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.”
103. “Give me a lamp and a place to stand, and I will move the world.”
104. “An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate, it becomes transformed by thought.”
105. “The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.”
106. “When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.”
107. “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
108. “Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.”
109. “I paint just as I breathe.”
110. “When I work I relax; doing nothing or entertaining visitors makes me tired.”
111. “I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches.”
112. “I search incessantly and there is a logical sequence in all this research.”
113. “I attempt to observe nature, always. I am intent on resemblance, and resemblance more real than the real, attaining the surreal.”
114. “For my part I always aim at likeness.… For me surreality is nothing else, never has been anything else, than that deep likeness far beyond the shapes and colors of immediate appearance.”
115. “I have only one thought: work.”
116. “In art, the mass of people no longer seek consolation and exaltation but whatever is new, odd, original, extravagant, or scandalous.”
117. “By amusing myself with all these games, rebuses, and arabesques I became famous, famous very quickly.”
118. “But when I am quite alone I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the ancient, splendid sense of the word.”
119. “In the course of my reading I have necessarily waded through thick clouds of interpretative Teutonic metaphysics and a great deal of homespun psychology.”
120. “Where do I get this power of creating and forming? I don’t know.”
121. “The man in the glass cannot make himself out.”
122. “Even if he had been as fluent as Bossuet no amount of words could have said so much, nor so accurately, as a single picture.”
123. “Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.”
124. “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward, you can remove all traces of reality.”
125. “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
126. “Art is the most beautiful of all lies.”
127. “It is not what an artist does that counts, but what he is.”
128. “Give me a museum, and I’ll fill it.”
129. “When art critics get together, they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”
130. “It’s not what you paint but how you paint it.”
131. “You must not be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes are never a crime in art.”
132. “The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.”
133. “In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”
134. “A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions.”
135. “An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate, it becomes transformed by thought.”
136. “The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.”
137. “What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter someday, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.”
138. “When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.”
139. “Every positive value has its price in negative terms. The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.”
140. “The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.”
141. “The one thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.”
142. “One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite – that particular peach is but a detail.”
143. “The more I paint, the more I like everything.”
144. “Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.”
145. “What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter someday, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.”
146. “Art is the most effective mode of communication that exists.”
147. “Art is the lie that makes us see the truth.”
148. “Every act of creation is, first of all, an act of destruction.”
149. “An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate, it becomes transformed by thought.”
150. “Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.”
151. “It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”
152. “There is no such thing as a mistake in art.”
153. “Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”
154. “To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.”
155. “We don’t grow older; we grow riper.”
156. “Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.”
157. “You mustn’t always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.”
158. “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”
159. “Give me a lamp and a place to stand, and I will move the world.”
160. “An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate, it becomes transformed by thought.”
161. “The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.”
162. “What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter someday, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.”
163. “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
164. “It’s not what you paint but how you paint it.”
165. “When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.”
166. “When art critics get together, they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”
167. “You must not be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes are never a crime in art.”
168. “You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression.”
169. “It is not up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise, it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”
170. “A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions.”
171. “Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”
172. “Give me some mud and I will paint you a picture of a woman.”
173. “There is no such thing as a mistake in art.”
174. “A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.”
175. “The one thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.”
176. “The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.”
Which of these Pablo Picasso Quotes did you find to be the most inspirational?
Joel Brown (Founder of Addicted2Success.com)
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