Yves Quotes

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Every tech product on the body like Jawbone or in the home like August is different. But there are definitely principles that apply across the board for me, such as integration in everyday life and discretion. ~ Yves Behar

My mom worked at [American] Vogue before I was born. She has always been fashion-minded. I grew up with original Yves Saint Laurent sketches on the wall in our house. A lot of that rubbed off on me. ~ Zachary Cole Smith

When I was young I had an apprenticeship as an engineer. ~ Yves Rossy

Jean-Yves looked up at his mother's face, her greying chignon, her harsh features: it was difficult to feel a rush of tenderness, of affection for this woman; as far back as he could remember, she had never really been one for hugs; it was equally difficult to imagine her in the role of a sensual lover, a slut. He suddenly realised that his father must have been bored shitless his whole life. He felt terribly shocked by this, his hands tensed on the edge of the table: this time it was irreparable, it was definitive. In despair, he tried to recall a moment when he had seen his father beaming, happy, genuinely glad to be alive. ~ Michel Houellebecq

When we return wild animals to nature, we merely return them to what is already theirs. For man cannot give wild animals freedom, they can only take it away. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Each model I have represents a type of ideal women to me. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

I am not really sure that Diana Vreeland did Yves Saint Laurent a favor, as opposed to the world, by putting that exhibition at the Met in 1983. Because I'm sure that Saint Laurent started looking back at his own work. You see that with artists, don't you? Once they get their first retrospective, it's really hard for them to push ahead. ~ Suzy Menkes

I arrived on earth in 1928. Born into a milieu of painters, I acquired my taste for painting with my mother's milk. ~ Yves Klein

Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

As students, we have all known two types of teachers, the pedantic and the inspiring. The former have a definite method and operate according to well-established habits; the latter need neither, because they know the subject through and through, Indeed, we may say that teaching methods, which generate subjective habits, are but poor substitutes for the kind of objective intimacy with the subject matter to be taught, which we call 'habitus ~ Yves Simon

The Swiss can be very difficult. ~ Yves Behar

I'd really like to be in closer contact with life. I'm a little too distant, I guess. I like to place myself outside. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Answers make you wise, but questions make you human. ~ Yves Montand

I prefer to shock rather than to bore through repetition, ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Sometimes the best answer to a question is another question. Is it not by asking questions that we stimulate each other to reach more deeply into our own source and, thereby, approach the Source, both together and in our different ways? (7) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

We have to prepare for what life could become in 40 years. We need to outline what is possible and what is impossible with the non-renewable resources of the Earth. What role will technological improvement play? Taking all this into account, what kind of life can we produce in the best way for 10 billion people? That's a problem that needs to be solved. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Without ethics, everything happens as if we were all five billion passengers on a big machinery and nobody is driving the machinery. And it's going faster and faster, but we don't know where. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Dressing is a way of life. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Decadence attracts me. It suggests a new world, and, for me, society's struggle between life and death is absolutely beautiful. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Our society is turning toward more and more needless consumption. It is a vicious circle that I compare to cancer ... Should we eliminate suffering, diseases? The idea is beautiful, but perhaps not a benefit for the long term. We should not allow our dread of diseases to endanger the future of our species ... In order to stabilize world population, we need to eliminate 350,000 people a day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

To feel the soul without explaining it, without vocabulary, and to represent this sensation. ~ Yves Klein

The best religion or practice is the one that makes us better. (42) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

I've been influenced by some of the greatest designers. Charles Eames. And Bruno Munari in the '50s in Italy - when they had to retool the industry of war into an industry to help society. In a way, I'm influenced by designers that were there at a radical time of change. ~ Yves Behar

Fashions pass quickly, and nothing is more pathetic than those puppets of fashion outrageously made up one day, pale the next, pleated or ironed stiff, libertine or ascetic. Playing with fashion is an art. The first rule is don't burn your wings. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not ... All colours arouse specific associative ideas, psychologically material or tangible, while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract. ~ Yves Klein

Our principal role as designers is to accelerate new ideas and the adoption of new ideas. ~ Yves Behar

Increasingly, the winners in today's business environment are those companies that know how to leverage complexity and exploit it to create competitive advantage. ~ Yves Morieux

I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style. ~ Vincent Cassel

Under water, man becomes an archangel. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

All the drawings and sketches and clothes of Yves Saint Laurent in the '70s were so colorful, so bright. ~ Frida Giannini

What is wonderful about my art is that dream and reality can become one. There is just one step between the two. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Design is a tool that either allows us to create new markets or disrupt existing ones. ~ Yves Behar

The immaterial told me that I was indeed an occidental, a right-thinking Christian who believes in the 'Resurrection of the flesh'. A whole phenomenology then appeared, but a phenomenology without ideas, or rather without any of the systems of official conventions. What appeared was distinct from form and became Immediacy. 'The mark of the immediate' - that was what I needed. ~ Yves Klein

We must never confuse elegance with snobbery ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

I had proof that I had five senses, that I knew how to get myself to function! And then I lost my childhood ... ~ Yves Klein

What I learned from my years in Silicon Valley is that design can have a primary role in how a business is shaped, how a company can be design-driven. In my experience of large industry in Europe, that knowledge has been lost. ~ Yves Behar

Blue Jeans? They should be worn by farm girls milking cows! ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

I never felt truly at home in Switzerland. ~ Yves Behar

Yves did not like showers, he preferred long, scalding baths, with newspapers, cigarettes, and whiskey on a chair next to the bathtub, and with Eric nearby to talk to, to shampoo his hair, and to scrub his back. ~ James Baldwin

The meditative mind sees disagreeable or agreeable things with equanimity, patience, and good-will. Transcendent knowledge is seeing reality in utter simplicity. (146) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

The United Nation's goal is to reduce population selectively by encouraging abortion, forced sterilization, and control of human reproduction, and regards two-thirds of the human population as excess baggage, with 350,000 people to be eliminated per day. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

My name will be written in fiery letters on the Champs Elysees. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Haute couture is a legitimate subject for Yves Saint Laurent and could resume one day. ~ Hedi Slimane

Follow me. Yves held out a hand, expecting me to take it.
I had had enough of being pushed about, towed here,
shoved there. Lead the way, O master.
He raised an eyebrow at my sarcasm. Glad to see you
have seen the light. I only want what's best for you.
Mr Arrogant or what?
I don't mean it like that. He shook his head, telling
himself off. I just want to make this right but I seem to be
doing it all wrong.
Then let me go.
That would be a tragedy. Give me a chance here.
Please. ~ Joss Stirling

A common denominator in every single nuclear accident - a nuclear plant or on a nuclear submarine - is that before the specialists even know what has happened, they rush to the media saying, 'There's no danger to the public.' They do this before they themselves know what has happened because they are terrified that the public might react violently, either by panic or by revolt. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

My paintings are only the ashes of my art ~ Yves Klein

We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

The future is in the hands of those who explore ... and from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for nature and for humankind an infinite love. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

When I first came to the Bay area, I worked in Silicon Valley in the early to mid-'90s, and I think what mattered then was our ability as designers to create a vision around people's ideas. ~ Yves Behar

I find men's clothing fascinating because sometime between, say, 1930 and 1936 a handful of basic shapes were created and still prevail as a sort of scale of expression, with which every man can project his own personality and his own dignity. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

The imagination is the vehicle of sensibility. Transported by the imagination, we attain life, life itself, which is absolute art. ~ Yves Klein

For myself, I wouldn't have lifted a finger to own a Rolex, a pair of Nikes or a BMW Z3; in fact, I had never succeeded in identifying the slightest difference between designer goods and non-designer goods. In the eyes of the world, I was clearly wrong. I was aware of this: I was in a minority, and consequently in the wrong. There had to be a difference between Yves Saint-Laurent shirts and other shirts, between Gucci moccasins and Andre moccasins. I was alone in not perceiving this difference; it was an infirmity which I could not cite as grounds for condemning the world. Does one ask a blind man to set himself up as an expert on post-impressionist painting? Through my blindness, however involuntary, I set myself apart from a living human reality powerful enough to incite both devotion and crime. These youths, through their half-savage instincts, undoubtedly discerned the presence of beauty; their desire was laudable, and perfectly in keeping with social norms; it was merely a question of rectifying the inappropriate way in which it was expressed. ~ Michel Houellebecq

I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.
~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Elegance is no longer significant; clothes have to be fun. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Steve Jobs changed my life. He also changed the life of every designer. ~ Yves Behar

Very much alone in my work, I am almost jealous of it. ~ Yves Tanguy

What is the real origin of my own anger? Is it the ego defending its territory, or is it something that has its source in the desire for the well-being of all? (73) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

Yves Saint Laurent is a young man of excellent taste; the more he copies me the more taste he displays. ~ Coco Chanel

Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Just, in future, an 'I'm-not-going-to-get-myself-killed' note would be appreciated. ~ Joss Stirling

Do not believe anything merely because you are told it is so, because others believe it, because it comes from Tradition, or because you have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect. Believe, take for your doctrine, and hold true to that, which, after serious investigation, seems to you to further the welfare of all beings. (47) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

At first there is nothing, then there is a profound nothingness, after that a blue profundity. ~ Yves Klein

All life is part of a complex relationship in which each is dependent upon the others, taking from, giving to and living with all the rest. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

The street and me is a love story. 1971 is a great date because, finally, fashion took to the street. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

I've spent a lot on clothes. I'm not kidding when I say I could have bought several country homes with the money. I've also given a lot away over time. I had a lovely Yves Saint Laurent jacket that I'd only worn once or twice, but I'm one for spring cleaning rather than storing my clothes. ~ Donna Air

The notion of 'reduce and refine' is one I've pursued. I truly believe that by making things less complex, by finding innovative ways to make sustainability affordable, we can advance the notion that it is possible. ~ Yves Behar

Sometimes we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being. (109) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

My mantra is: 'Good design accelerates the adoption of new ideas.' ~ Yves Behar

And let us remember too that life, in its exuberance, always succeeds in overflowing the narrow limits within which man thinks he can confine it. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

I showed it is possible to fly a little bit like a bird. ~ Yves Rossy

Clouds, this evening
The same as always, like thirst,
The same red dress, unfastened.
Imagine, passerby,
Our new beginnings, our eagerness, our trust. ~ Yves Bonnefoy

I am not a scientist. I am, rather, an impresario of scientists. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Yves Saint Laurent was my first fashion show. I wore his tuxedo. And Helmut Newton was my first photographer, in 1973. I was really very lucky. I had an amazing career. ~ Jerry Hall

I used to spend my holidays there in my grandparents' large family house, with my numerous cousins. When I die, I am going to be buried in the village cemetery. ~ Yves Chauvin

The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

To be beautiful, woman enough to have a black sweater, black skirt and walk arm in arm with the man she loves. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Designers have a responsibility to show the future as they want it to be - or at least as it can be, not just the way an industry wants it to be. ~ Yves Behar

Fuseproject was founded in 1999, and the notion behind it, which is alive and kicking today, is fusing different disciplines. Our teams are absolutely incredible at their own discipline, but most importantly, they're incredible at partnering with each other. ~ Yves Behar

Unknowing, let us sleep. Chest against chest,
Our breathing mingled, hand in hand without dreams. ~ Yves Bonnefoy

My motto is more, 'If you want to find something new, look for something new!' There is a certain amount of risk in this attitude, as even the slightest failure tends to be resounding, but you are so happy when you succeed that it is worth taking the risk. ~ Yves Chauvin

Xav tugged Yves off me and handed me the call button. You'll be needing this, Phee, when my irritating little squirt of a brother bothers you again. Just press and the nurses will come running. One of them looks like a pro-wrestler, so she'll make short work of him. ~ Joss Stirling

I have written my name on the far side of the sky. ~ Yves Klein

For a woman, le smoking is an indispensable garment with which she finds herself continually in fashion, because it is about style, not fashion. Fashions come and go, but style is forever. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

If you are a Buddhist, inspire yourself by thinking of the bodhisattva. If you are a Christian, think of the Christ, who came not to be served by others but to serve them in joy, in peace, and in generosity. For these things, these are not mere words, but acts, which go all the way, right up to their last breath. Even their death is a gift, and resurrection is born from this kind of death. (157) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

Everything has yet to be invented. I never say 'green' - I say 'greener.' It's greener simply because this is a continuum of change, improvement and discovery. ~ Yves Behar

I want to take as the canvas for my next picture the entire surface of France. ~ Yves Klein

Part of my life is spent designing in urban centers, and part of my life has been spent in factories. But the other part of my life is spent in nature. ~ Yves Behar

In certain situations, manifesting anger is the right attitude; in others it is not the right thing to manifest because it will only add to the violence. In the first case, anger unblocks the conflict and causes another to become more conscious. In the latter, it only adds to the unconsciousness and inflames the conflict. (73) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

Color is enslaved by line, that becomes writing. ~ Yves Klein

I love Yves Saint Laurent. I love Chanel. And Versace! Such beautiful gowns! ~ Tamala Jones

The essential of painting is that 'something', that 'ethereal glue,' that 'intermediary product' which the artist exudes with all his creative being and which he has the power to place, to encrust, to impregnate into the pictorial matter of the painting. ~ Yves Klein

Elegance and beauty have been banished. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Since fire's born of fire, why should we desire
To gather up its scattered ash.
On the appointed day we surrendered what we were
To a vaster blaze, the evening sky. ~ Yves Bonnefoy

I have always believed that fashion was not only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent