Arts Student Quotes & Sayings

There is a growing evidence that arts education improves student learning and thereby produces better citizens — David J. Skorton

And the art was in every corner and wall ... a Mural of the Century of Progress in Colombia South America is rich in detail, painted by a student of the Fine Arts Academy of Chicago named Santiago Martinez; a name to remember ... — Santiago Martinez Delgado

Environment-based education produces student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math; improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages; and develops skills in problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making. — Richard Louv

Any advanced student will tell you the best way to recover guard is simply not to get your guard passed in the first place. — Chris Matakas

Archery, fencing, spear fighting, all of the martial arts, tea ceremony, flower arranging ... in all of these, correct breathing, correct balance, and correct stillness help to remake the individual. The basic aim is always the same: by tirelessly practicing a given skill, the student finally sheds the ego with its fears, worldly ambitions, and reliance on objective scrutiny - sheds it so completely that he becomes the instrument of a deeper power, from which mastery falls instinctively, without further effort on his part, like a ripe fruit. — Karlfried Graf Durckheim

I saw- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together ... Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. — Mary Shelley

In a personal way, to do with family and the father-son relationship, in a kind of artistic way with regard to him being an art student. I also studied the visual arts at Lancaster University. I then decided to become an actor as he was becoming a musician. And then as an actor/performer, we have similar sort of interests - music hall and that whole world. So, there's a lot that I felt connected with. — Andy Serkis

Do not seek victory, for victory in itself will not serve you. Seek to understand what made the victory possible. — Chris Matakas

There's a reason that there are oodles of young Aussies, Germans, Japanese, even Chinese backpackers traipsing around the world. They are unencumbered by debilitating student loans. No such luck for the American Theater Arts major with $120,000 in loans. — J. Maarten Troost

The boy, called Urbain, is now fourteen years old and wonderfully clever. He deserves to be given the best of educations, and in the neighborhood of Saintes the best education available is to be had at the Jesuit College of Bordeaux. This celebrated seat of learning comprised a high school for boys, a liberal arts college, a seminary, and a School of Advanced Studies for ordained postgraduates. Here the precociously brilliant Urbain Grandier spent more than ten years, first as schoolboy, and later as undergraduate, theological student and, after his ordination in 1615, as Jesuit novice. Not that he intended to enter the Company; for he felt no vocation to subject himself to so rigid a discipline. No, his career was to be made, not in a religious order, but as a secular priest. — Aldous Huxley

Jiu Jitsu is meant to serve us, not the other way around. It is meant to make you more of whatever it is you already are. It is meant to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is meant to bring to conscious attention all that once went unseen. It is meant to make you more loving. It is meant to make you more wise, but less certain. It is meant to make us humble, yet supremely confident. It is meant to remind us of our frailty while simultaneously making us feel invincible. — Chris Matakas

I wanted to get to the most essential aspect of my being, and look around for a while. I wanted to explore what I am in my most basic self. I wanted to chip away at all of the nonsense I have acquired through my twenty-nine years on this earth. I wanted to find truth. Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats. Jiu Jitsu has peeled the veil of daily life, and has shown me what lies beyond the curtain. We willingly accept the chains that circumstance forces upon us, and we grow to find comfort in them. We attach various fetters of day-to-day living to our being, and we do so with a smile. We accept these constraints for they come in the way of comfort. We accept conformity for it appears the path of least resistance. We strive toward the middle, and we run from ourselves. — Chris Matakas

I had done student films for the School Of Visual Arts and for NYU and all these schools in New York, so those were my first film experiences, but they were student films, so I guess they don't really count. — Guillermo Diaz

We call it training. Not because we are training for Jiu Jitsu. We are training for life. — Chris Matakas

He orders a batch of handmade tiedyed shirts from Guizhou province and takes them to a graduate student at the Central Authority Fine Arts School to find out what to charge. The graduate student swings his long hair back and forth and tells Hao An these shirts are not authentic enough, not tribal enough. No way are young Beijingers going to be interested in them: there's no art, no attitude. "What should I do now then?" asks Hao An. The graduate student tells him to head to the bars in Sanlitun and sell them to drunken foreigners and pretentious businessmen with art collections. — Xiaolu Guo

I believe that which you study is only matched in importance by the sincerity with which you approach it. — Chris Matakas

Ambiguity around ambiguity is forgivable in an unpublished poet and expected of an arts student on the pull: for a professional comedian demoting himself to the role of 'thinker', with stadiums full of young people hanging on his every word, it won't really do. — Robert Webb

What constitutes a good manager in this field? He must be knowledgeable in the art with which he is concerned, an impresario, labor negotiator, diplomat, educator, publicity and public relations expert, politician, skilled businessman, a social sophisticate, a servant of the community, a tireless leader - becomingly humble before authority - a teacher, a tyrant, and a continuing student of the arts. — John D. Rockefeller

I don't think I'm in any position to call myself a martial artist. I'm a student of the martial arts. — Lou Reed

A student's mentality in learning martial arts is to overcome one's problems. — Ip Chun

I said it before and I'll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there's only movies.
Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I'd be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don't write movies. You make movies. — Stephen Fry

It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe
until recently
have been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning ... I do not believe that culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole culture goes. — T. S. Eliot

Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats. — Chris Matakas

Active scholars are uniquely attracted by a high-quality graduate school of arts and sciences. Faculty members consider the teaching and training of new generations of graduate students as their highest calling. They believe that working with graduate students maintains and develops their professional skills more effectively than any other activity. It may be the main reason for the great attraction of academic jobs. Laboratory scientists have told me that the opportunity to work with graduate students keeps them in the university. For them, other options would center on research in commercial laboratories, but there the principal investigator would be assisted by technicians, and that is considered a far less creative interaction. — Henry Rosovsky

Jiu Jitsu has shown me that we are not confined to the lot which we inherit. We are not bound to these fetters eternally. They are temporal. We can transcend them should we sincerely choose to. Sincere effort is in fact the rarest virtue among man. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu gives each of us something that no other sport can. We have the opportunity to become truly great regardless of what circumstance fate has handed us. We have complete freedom and responsibility to achieve whatever level of mastery we wish. — Chris Matakas

I had joined Marvel in 1967, after a year in Vietnam and three years as a student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Stan Lee, then the editor-in-chief, hired me as a production assistant. — Herb Trimpe

I have seen far by seeing through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. I have exchanged a great deal of physical health for these insights, and these were trades worth making. My efforts were worth the return. I have sacrificed much in the name of this craft. Not for trophies or belts or prestige. For these fall away like dust. I pursued this art so fervently because it was not actually Jiu Jitsu I pursued. It was myself. — Chris Matakas

There is no more valuable skill than studentship. The farther we go down one area of human understanding, the more we see the corollaries that all activities share. Everything I do for the rest of my life, all the skills I acquire, will be made possible because of my time spent on the mats. It has revealed a symbiosis between all things that I never knew existed. — Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu uses us to express itself, and the best thing we can do to is to become a vehicle capable of expressing Jiu Jitsu with all of its perfection minus our imperfections. — Chris Matakas

An arm bar in a vacuum is worthless. It is the realization of the truths which constitute that arm bar that is the real treasure we seek. — Chris Matakas

Whereas Taft discouraged the young Yale student from extracurricular reading, fearful it would detract from required courses, Roosevelt read widely yet managed to stand near the top of his class. The breath of his numerous interests allowed him to draw on knowledge across various disciplines, from zoology in philosophy and religion, from poetry and drama to history and politics. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

We seek to understand Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to understand ourselves. We have different explicit goals, from getting in shape, learning self-defense or competition, but tacitly we all seek mastery of ourselves. — Chris Matakas

If Jiu Jitsu does not make you a better father, son, mother, daughter, wife or husband, you are missing the point. If Jiu Jitsu does not leave you viewing strangers in a kinder light, you are missing the point. If you are not better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of life due to your training, then you are not really training. — Chris Matakas

I believe we must pursue mastery for who we become along the way in its achievement. When we progress in Jiu Jitsu, that newfound experience and wisdom transcends into all areas of our lives. We use Jiu Jitsu as the vehicle for growth, but that growth radiates over all of human activity. Someone who devotes time and energy in learning this skill is learning far more than how to subdue an opponent. The student learns persistence, perseverance, pattern recognition, problem solving, and most importantly, learning how to learn. In the arena of life, these virtues are far more valuable than any guard pass. — Chris Matakas

Contrary to what some folks would have us believe, it is not tragic, even if undesirable, for a person to leave a liberal arts education not having read major works from this canon. Their lives are not ending. And the exciting dimension of knowledge is that we can learn a work without formally studying it. If a student graduates without reading Shakespeare and then reads or studies this work later, it does not delegitimize whatever formal course of study that was completed. — Bell Hooks

The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and maths all have equal and central contributions to make to a student's education. — Ken Robinson

Sir Kenneth MacMillan's version of 'Romeo and Juliet' is my favorite full-length ballet, Sergei Prokofiev's breathtaking score a favorite composition of music. As a student of martial arts, I loved drawing my sword in defense of my Capulet kin. — Sascha Radetsky

The infinitude of Jiu Jitsu allows for the infinitude of the types of practitioners. There exists a game for each and every one of us which is specifically possible within the confines of our particular skill set. — Chris Matakas

I was always involved in the arts from a young age. I started studying classical piano at age four as a student of the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music. — Monica Raymund

It's now up to the states to figure out how they implement that definition of a well-rounded education, in other words, where they spend federal funds. The new law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, has suggestions like computer science, health, foreign language and geography. So there's no guarantee the arts will now flourish. Arts advocates are ready to help states and school districts with their plans. — Elizabeth Blair Lee

There is no concrete way to play Jiu Jitsu, and this is why so many different types of people find joy in it. — Chris Matakas

For the sincere student, it mustn't be enough to simply understand Jiu Jitsu. We must seek to understand ourselves. — Chris Matakas

Max sent Scottie some literary advice, the same dictum he gave every college student who called on him. He stressed the importance of a liberal arts education but urged her to avoid all courses in writing. "Everyone has to find her own way of writing," he wrote Scottie, "and the source of finding it is largely out of literature. — A. Scott Berg

Including my nine years as a student, the majority of my life has been at Hokkaido University. After my retirement from the university in 1994, I served at two private universities in Okayama Prefecture - Okayama University of Science and Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts - before retiring from university work in 2002. — Akira Suzuki

I was a very interested arts student, I was always into that part of school and when I got into high school I went into architectural drafting. It gave me an understanding of how to build things and it's really helped me put things in perspective. With my music and my movies, to me it's all art. — Ice Cube

The arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds students will go on to graduate from college. As First Lady Michelle Obama sums up, both she and the President believe 'strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nation's leaders for tomorrow.' — Arne Duncan