Dali Salvador Quotes & Sayings

An unpredictable, faithful and objective hazard seems to have systematically singled out my life to make what are normally uneventful incidents violent, phenomenal and memorable. — Salvador Dali

Surrealism is not a movement. It is a latent state of mind perceivable through the powers of dream and nightmare. — Salvador Dali

Surrealism - in particular with Salvador Dali - was all about ego. It was all about extreme individualism. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums. — Salvador Dali

The fact I myself do not understand what my paintings mean while I am painting them does not imply that they are meaningless. — Salvador Dali

The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments — Salvador Dali

The world of the cinema and of painting are very different; precisely, the possibilities of photography and the cinema reside in that unlimited fantasy which is born of things themselves ... a piece of sugar can become on the screen larger than an infinite perspective of gigantic buildings. — Salvador Dali

I think that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth consists in being able to live, if he likes, without having the need to work. — Salvador Dali

We must always remember that the Chinese revolution was not a peasant's revolution, but one of the extreme Right. — Salvador Dali

Photographic fantasy: more agile and faster in discoveries than murky subconscious processes! — Salvador Dali

The problem with the youth of today' is that one is no longer part of it. — Salvador Dali

Geniuses must never die, the progress of mankind depends on us — Salvador Dali

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents. — Salvador Dali

I dedicate this novel to Gala, who was constantly by my side while I was writing it, who was the good fairy of my equilibrium, who banished the salamanders of my doubts and strengthened the lions of certainties ... — Salvador Dali

An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and has no hair under her arms. — Salvador Dali

I will be sof brief, I have already finished. — Salvador Dali

I shall be so brief that I have already finished — Salvador Dali

If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it. — Salvador Dali

When I paint, the Sea Roars Others Splash about in the bath — Salvador Dali

I'm going to live forever. Geniuses don't die. — Salvador Dali

I was never capable of being an average pupil. I would either seem refractory to any teaching and give the impression of being completely dumb or I would fling myself on my work with a frenzy, a patience, and a willingness to learn that astonished everybody. But to awaken my zeal, it was necessary to offer me something I liked. Once my appetite had been whetted, I became ravenously hungry. — Salvador Dali

To be interesting, one has to provoke. — Salvador Dali

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating: It is either good or bad. — Salvador Dali

God is just another artist, like me. — Salvador Dali

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. — Salvador Dali

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. — Salvador Dali

Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life, let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating, on condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul - let my unformed childhood soul, as it ages, assume the rational and esthetic forms of an architecture, let me learn just everything that others cannot teach me, what only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin! — Salvador Dali

Drawing is the honesty of the art. — Salvador Dali

I do not understand why, when I ask for grilled lobster in a restaurant, I'm never served a cooked telephone. — Salvador Dali

The reason some portraits don't look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures. — Salvador Dali

Repulsion is the sentry that guards the gate to all that we most desire. — Salvador Dali

Let my enemies devour each other — Salvador Dali

Beauty should be edible, or not at all. — Salvador Dali

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob. — Salvador Dali

I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly. — Salvador Dali

Nothing proves the truth of surrealism so much as photography. The Zeiss lens has unexpected faculties of surprise! — Salvador Dali

Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health.
However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?"
Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches. — Salvador Dali

The only difference between me and a madman is I'm not mad. — Salvador Dali

When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is little doubt as to which is at fault. — Salvador Dali

It is mostly with your blood, Gala that I paint my pictures — Salvador Dali

Sometimes you're quite fortunate, being on the stage, getting to meet people like Salvador Dali. — Bryan Ferry

[I am a] contradictory and paradoxical man. — Salvador Dali

I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power. — Salvador Dali

There's a peculiar porcelain bathtub in a field; almost as though it has been placed there for Salvador Dali to come and capture. — Tom Chesshyre

The daily life of a genius, his sleep, his digestion, he ecstasies, his nails, his colds, his blood, his life and death are essentially different from the rest of mankind. — Salvador Dali

I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly. — John Le Carre

Playing Augusta is like playing a Salvador Dali landscape. I expected a clock to fall out of the trees and hit me in the face. — David Feherty

You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity. You know, Dali spent two months in jail in Spain, and these two months were the most enjoyable and happy in my life. Before my jail period, I was always nervous, anxious. I didn't know if I should make a drawing, or perhaps make a poem, or go to the movies or the theatre, or catch a girl, or play with the boys. The people put me in jail, and my life became divine. Tremendous! — Salvador Dali

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality. — Salvador Dali

Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die. — Salvador Dali

Eroticism, hallucinogenic drugs, nuclear science, Gaudi's Gothic architecture, my love of gold - there is a common denominator in all of it: God is present in everything. The same magic is at the heart of all things, and all roads lead to the same revelation: we are children of God, and the entire universe tends towards the perfection of mankind. — Salvador Dali

Who knows how to taste wine never drinks wine again, but tastes secrets instead — Salvador Dali

It's Frank's painting on the cover. We were originally going to use a Salvador Dali painting that we got permission from Salvador Dali to use, and Frank found this one, and it really did fit the music much more. — Alice Cooper

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them. — Salvador Dali

I was thinking about what a magical portal this lobby was when the heavy glass door opened as if swept by wind and a familiar figure in a black and scarlet cape entered. It was Salvador Dali. He looked around the lobby nervously, and then, seeing my crow, smiled. He placed his elegant, bony hand atop my head and said: You are like a crow, a gothic crow. — Patti Smith

I do not believe in my death. — Salvador Dali

Forever will be you and me. — Salvador Dali

Dali was Renaissance man converted to psychoanalysis. — Salvador Dali

I am not strange. I am just not normal. — Salvador Dali

The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes its secrets — Salvador Dali

Happy is he who causes a scandal — Salvador Dali

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art. — Salvador Dali

If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics, and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than of genius. — Salvador Dali

Now sexual obsessions are the basis of artistic creation. Accumulated frustration leads to what Freud calls the process of sublimation. Anything that does not take place erotically sublimates itself in the work of art — Salvador Dali

Paranoiac-critical activity makes the world of delirium pass onto the plane of reality ... — Salvador Dali

Whatever happens, my audience mustn't know whether I am spoofing or being serious; and likewise I mustn't know either. I am in a constant interrogation; when does the deep and philosophically valid Dali begin, and where does the looney and preposterous Dali end? — Salvador Dali

Great wine requires a mad man to grow the vine, a wise man to watch over it, a lucid poet to make it, and a lover to drink it. — Salvador Dali

The true painter must be able, with the most usual things, to have the most unusual ideas. — Salvador Dali

Life is too short to remain unnoticed — Salvador Dali

Democratic governments are not suited to the publication of the thunderous revelations I am in the habit of making. The unpublished parts will appear later ... when Europe will have restored its traditional monarchies. — Salvador Dali

I used to hang out with Salvador Dali a lot. He was such a nice man. I really liked his wife Gala, too. People say that she was tricky, but she was never difficult with me. — Jerry Hall

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish. — Steven Wright

If I had a Salvador Dali painting, I would cuddle it to sleep. — Mac Miller

Without hesitation, I place Freud among the heroes. He dispossessed the Jewish people of the greatest and most influential of all heroes-Moses. — Salvador Dali

If I'm doing a logo, I'll do it in black and white. Once the form is feeling right, only then do I start exploring the color palettes. A good example was the process of rebranding the Salvador Dali Museum. I did at least 100 versions in black and white. — David Carson

Salvador Dali, lying on his deathbed in a stupor, is said to have been fed thousands of sheets of blank paper to sign for fake lithographs. — Peter Landesman

People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings. — Salvador Dali

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life — Salvador Dali

There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction. — Salvador Dali

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without winds. — Salvador Dali

Everything alters me, but nothing changes me. — Salvador Dali

The sole difference between myself and a madman is the fact that I am not mad. — Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali and fifty cents will get you a cup of clock melt. — Tom Robbins

Let me be the first to admit that the naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts. Senor Dali has the jump on me from the beginning. He remembers and describes in detail what it was like in the womb. My own earliest memory is of accompanying my father to a polling booth in Columbus, Ohio, where he voted for William McKinley. — James Thurber

If I'm going to be anything more than average, if anyone is going to remember me, then I need to go further, in art, in life, in everything! — Salvador Dali

From 17 to 21, I was obsessed by sport and art. In art, I loved the pre-Raphaelites and Rembrandt first. Then I discovered Salvador Dali, and it was like finding something I already knew. — Anthony Browne

Being in the studio, it's more of a controlled environment, where you can be Salvador Dali and sit back and look at the painting. And you can go, 'Ah, you know what? Maybe a little bit more red over here ... maybe add some blue over here.' You can sit back and look at the painting. — Zakk Wylde

Young people need plenty of difficulties to achieve something ... If you receive a little money for this, a little money for that, everything becomes mediocre, and collapses ignominiously. — Salvador Dali

For me, love must be ugly, looks must be divine, and death must be beautiful. — Salvador Dali

Photographic data ... is still and ESSENTIALLY THE SAFEST POETIC MEDIUM and the most agile process for catching the most delicate osmoses which exist between reality and surreality. The mere fact of photographic transposition means a total invention: the capture of a secret reality. — Salvador Dali

Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am hallucinogenic — Salvador Dali

Ancient philosophy was framed by prodigies,
Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.
And even though their thoughts were deemed the aristocratic voice,
they also had a thing for little boys.

Katherine the Great so it's been said,
needed large animals to be fulfilled in bed.
From historic rulers to the Ancient Greeks,
we're standing on the shoulders of freaks.

Isn't life pretty? Earnest Hemingway once said,
then he a bullet through his head.
Salvador Dali's surreal paintings were God sent,
you'd never know he ate his own excrement.

Then there's Da Vinci for whom it required,
dressing in women's underwear to be inspired.
From the great romantics to the Ancient Greeks,
we're standing on the shoulders of freaks.

Truman Capote needless to say,
would be intoxicated 20 hours a day.
From the modern authors to the Ancient Greeks,
we're standing on the shoulders of freaks. — Henry Phillips

Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams. — Salvador Dali

It happened in Chicago in 1886.
On the first of May, strikes paralyzed cities across the country. The Philadelphia Tribune offered a diagnosis: 'The labor element has been bitten by a kind of universal tarantula - it has gone dancing mad.'
Dancing mad were the workers who fought for the eight-hour day and for the right to form unions
...
On every May first, the entire world remembers them. With the passing of time, constitutions, laws, and international accords have proved them right.
But some of the most powerful corporations have yet to find out. They outlaw unions and keep track of the workday with those melting clocks painted by Salvador Dali. — Eduardo Galeano

I did this movie about Salvador Dali a few years ago and had hair extensions and a little bob. That was incredibly bizarre. — Robert Pattinson

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret. — Salvador Dali

Sometimes I spit on my mother's portrait for pleasure. — Salvador Dali

I don't take drugs: I am drugs. — Salvador Dali

Art is about imagination. When you look at a picture from Salvador Dali, that's about imagination. When you look at Picasso, that's about imagination. Doing stuff from your heart. — LL Cool J

Many people do not reach their eighties because they spend too much time in their forties. — Salvador Dali