21 Pablo Picasso’s Artistic Quotes

When I was a child 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.Life with Picasso by François Gilot (McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1964), Page 60

[Speaking of computers] But they are useless. They can only give you answers.Pablo Picasso: A Composite Interview by William Fifield, in The Paris Review 32 (Summer-Fall, 1964)

It takes a very long time to become young.The Hand of a Stranger by Jean Cocteau (Horizon Press, 1956), Page 20

If there were only one truth, you couldn’t paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.Picasso says... by Hélène Parmelin (Allen and Unwin, 1969), Page 115

The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.Picasso Plain by Hélène Parmelin (Secker & Warburg, 1963), Pages 158-159

Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters.Conversation avec Picasso by Christian Zervos, in Cahiers d'Art (Paris, 1935)

To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved.Picasso by Alexander Liberman, in Vogue (New York, November 1, 1956)

Work is a necessity for man. A horse does not go between the shafts of its own accord. Man invented the alarm clock.Conversation avec Picasso by Christian Zervos, in Cahiers d'Art (Paris, 1935)

What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn’t everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.Midis avec Picasso by Anatole Jakovsky, in Arts de France (Paris, 1946), no. 6

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.Conversation avec Picasso by Christian Zervos, in Cahiers d'Art (Paris, 1935)

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.Picasso Speaks, The Arts, Vol. 3, Marius de Zayas (New York, May 1923), Page 315

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.Conversation avec Picasso by Christian Zervos, in Cahiers d'Art (Paris, 1935)

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.Conversation avec Picasso by Christian Zervos, in Cahiers d'Art (Paris, 1935)

Art is never chaste. We forbid it to the ignorant innocents, never allow a contact with it to those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. And, if it’s chaste it isn’t art.Pablo Picasso by Antonina Vallentin (Paris, Club des Éditeurs, Albin-Michel, 1957), Page 268

I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.Conversation with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (February 13, 1934)

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.An Afternoon with Picasso by James Thrall Soby, in Saturday Review (September 1, 1956), Page 28

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.The Journals of Jean Cocteau by Wallace Fowlie (1956), Page 49

Only when painting isn’t painting can there be an affront to modesty.Picasso: Artist and His Model, and Other Recent Work by Hélène Parmelin (Abrams, 1965), Page 160

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.Picasso by Alexander Liberman, in Vogue (New York, November 1, 1956)

If you are a genius and unsuccessful, everybody treats you as if you were a genius, but when you come to be successful, when you commence to earn money, when you are really successful, then your family and everybody no longer treats you like a genius, they treat you like a man who has become successful.Picasso by Gertrude Stein (Beacon Press, 1959), Page 27

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 some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.Picasso and Company by Gyula Halász Brassaï (New York, Doubleday, 1966), Page 86

Everything you can imagine is real.No source

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.No source

Good artists copy, great artists steal.No source (More info)

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.No source (More info)