“Drawing is rather like playing music: it's like an interpretation. I never directly copy things. I interpret them.”
David Hockney · Various interviews and writings
Category
← Back to top
Philosophy Quotes
363 quotes on philosophy and the big questions — from the classics to the everyday.
“The moment you start thinking about being an artist, you're not really an artist anymore.”
David Hockney · Interviews and lectures, 1970s-1980s
“Art has to move you and design does not, unless it's not just design, it's art.”
David Hockney · Interview, 2006
“I realized that the camera is a tool, but it is also a way of thought.”
David Hockney · Various interviews, 1980s-1990s
“You cannot be totally sure when you're looking at something that you're seeing it clearly. You can only be sure you're going to look at it closely.”
David Hockney · Secret Knowledge lecture series, 2003
“I like people who have a sense of individuality. I think that's rare and it's to be admired.”
David Hockney · Interview, circa 1990s
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do not grieve over what has passed, and do not be overjoyed by what has come to you.”
Luqman · Attributed in classical Arabic wisdom literature
“I am the most unpleasant, rude, ignorant, and all-round obnoxious arsehole that anyone could possibly have the misfortune to meet. I am dismissive of the virtuous, unaware of the beautiful, and uncomprehending in the face of the happy. So if I didn't understand I was being asked to be best man, it is because I never expected to be anybody's best friend.”
Sherlock Holmes · BBC Sherlock, Series 3, Episode 2: The Sign of Three, 2014
Share this quote
“I am the most unpleasant, rude, ignorant, and all-round obnoxious arsehole that anyone could possibly have the misfortune to meet. I am dismissive of the virtuous, unaware of the beautiful, and uncomprehending in the face of the happy. So if I didn't understand I was being asked to be best man, it is because I never expected to be anybody's best friend.”
“The world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics.”
Sherlock Holmes · BBC Sherlock, Series 3, Episode 2: The Sign of Three, 2014
“I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them.”
Sherlock Holmes · BBC Sherlock, Series 2, Episode 3: The Reichenbach Fall, 2012
“Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain.”
Jim Moriarty · BBC Sherlock, Series 2, Episode 1: A Scandal in Belgravia, 2012
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard · Journals, 1843
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Oscar Wilde · The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates · Plato's Apology, c. 399 BC
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, Book 4
