Rene Magritte Quotes

He is no longer the pretext for a story: the story itself renders him homage. The works of Fantomas can neither be destroyed nor accept modifications ... Fantomas requires more of others than of himself ... He is never completely invisible. His likeness can be seen through his face ... Fantomas's science is more precious than the word. It is not possible to guess it - and no one can doubt its power.

Too often we tend to reduce what is strange to what is familiar. I intend to restore the familiar to the strange.

Painting bores me like everything else. Unfortunately, painting is one of the activities - it is bound up in the series of activities - that seems to change almost nothing in life, the same habits are always recurring.

No object is stuck with its name so irrevocably that one cannot find another which suits it better.

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.

Do not accept any explanation of the world either through chance or determinism. You are not responsible for your belief. It is not even you who decides that you are not responsible - and so on to infinity. You are not obliged to believe. There is no point of departure.

Everyday objects shriek aloud.

Those who become entangled in these false ideas are prevented from perceiving the Integral Oneness.

I despise my own past and that of others. I despise resignation, patience, professional heroism and all the obligatory sentiments. I also despise the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, radio announcers' voices, aerodynamics, the Boy Scouts, the smell of naphtha, the news, and drunks.
I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street.
I hope for vibrant love, the impossible, the chimerical.
I dread knowing precisely my own limitations.

Only thought can resemble. It resembles by being what it sees, hears, or knows; it becomes what the world offers it.

My painting is visible images which conceal nothing ... they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.

Visible things can be invisible. However, our powers of thought grasp both the visible and the invisible – and I make use of painting to render thoughts visible.

It is not my intention to make anything comprehensible. I am of the opinion that there are sufficient paintings which one understands after a shorter or longer delay, and that therefore some incomprehensible painting would now be welcome. I am at pains to deliver such, as far as possible.

What he imagines evokes nothing imaginary, it evokes the reality of the world that experience and reason treat in a confused manner.

An object never serves the same function as its image - or its name.

Between words and objects one can create new relations and specify characteristics of language and objects generally ignored in everyday life.

My painting is visible images that conceal nothing ... they evoke mystery. Mystery means nothing. It is unknowable.

I want nevertheless to add that for me the world is a defiance of common sense.

I do not like money, either for itself or for what it can buy, since I want nothing we know about.

If one looks at a thing with the intention of trying to discover what it means, one ends up no longer seeing the thing itself, but of thinking of the question that is raised.

The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.

Each thing we see hides something else we want to see.

The present reeks of mediocrity and the atom bomb.

My investigations resembled the pursuit of the solution to a problem for which I had three data: the object, the thing connected with it in the shadow of my consciousness, and the light wherein that thing would become apparent.

An object is not so attached to its name that we cannot find another one that would suit it better.

I think we are responsible for the universe, but that doesn't mean we decide anything.

Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible.

As regards the artists themselves, most of them gave up their freedom quite lightly, placing their art at the service of someone or something. As a rule, their concerns and their ambitions are those of any old careerist. I thus acquired a total distrust of art and artists, whether they were officially recognised or were endeavouring to become so, and I felt that I had nothing in common with this guild. I had a point of reference which held me elsewhere, namely that magic within art which I had encountered as a child.

This is not a pipe.

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist