Museum Collection Quotes & Sayings

OLD GRIZZLY ADAMS. [37-*] James C. Adams, or "Grizzly Adams," as he was generally termed, from the fact of his having captured so many grizzly bears, and encountered such fearful perils by his unexampled daring, was an extraordinary character. For many years a hunter and trapper in the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains, he acquired a recklessness which, added to his natural invincible courage, rendered him truly one of the most striking men of the age. He was emphatically what the English call a man of "pluck." In 1860, he arrived in New York with his famous collection of California animals, captured by himself, consisting of twenty or thirty immense grizzly bears, at the head of which stood "Old Sampson" - now in the American Museum - wolves, half a dozen other species of bear, California lions, tigers, buffalo, elk, etc., and Old Neptune, the great sea-lion, from the Pacific. — P.T. Barnum

The noble science of Geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection of the record. The crust of the earth with its embedded remains must not be looked at as a well-filled museum, but as a poor collection made at hazard and at rare intervals. — Charles Darwin

The fact is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century - it was actually mummified, skin and all - but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire. — Adam Savage

Even when I was a little girl, I remember going to the Museum of Modern Art. I think my parents took me there once or twice. And what I really remember is the design collection. — Barbara Kruger

A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection, the bar has been set pretty low. — Jerry Saltz

When you located someone from the past online, it was like finding that person trapped behind glass in the permanent collection of a museum. You knew they were still there, and it seemed to you as if they would stay there forever. — Meg Wolitzer

The people I admire most hadn't really followed a particular path that was visible when they were on it. — Anderson Cooper

I couldn't help but remember the one at my parents' place after they had passed. I'd gone through their things and hadn't kept much, but when it came time for the auction I'd had a strong impulse to bid on everything like some museum curator attempting to keep the collection whole. — Craig Johnson

What you see at the Field Museum is only like, 10 percent of the collection. It's birds of paradise and passenger pigeons and in all these drawers that pull out, these specimens come out and it's spectacular. And it worked out. — Andrew Bird

I have a one of a kind collection of dolls. My house is like a museum. — Richard Simmons

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: "The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon." No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller. — Flannery O'Connor

The 'Robben Island Bible' has arrived at the British Museum. It's a garish thing, its cover plastered with pink and gold Hindu images, designed to hide its contents. Within is the finest collection of words generated by human intelligence: the complete works of William Shakespeare. — Daniel Hannan

They are works of art that can be considered works of art but don't have to be in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. — Michael Heizer

She opened up the glass jar she kept spare buttons in and began sorting through them. It was like handling bits and pieces of the past - buttons from loved ones' dresses and suits and coats carefully gathered up and saved for future use. She had inherited many of the buttons from her mother and grandmother, even her Great Aunt Maggie. Each woman adding to the collection, like curators of a family museum. Now what would happen to them? — Elizabeth Jennings

Unmoor the boat, we could go ... downriver ...
History is a collection of found objects washed up through time. Goods, ideas, personalities surface towards us and then sink away and some we hook out and others we ignore. And as the pattern changes so does the meaning. We cannot rely on the facts. Time that returns everything, changes everything..a bundle of abandoned clothes. The end of one identity and the beginning of another. ... History is a madman's museum. I think I understand some of this, But it's all subject to the tide. Unmoor the boat. Part miracle part madness. My life is a series of set sails and shipwrecks. I run aground I cut loose, the rim is dangerously near the waterline. I feel like a saint in a coracle. Head thrown back, sun on my throat. Unmoor the boat. — Jeanette Winterson

As far as wages are concerned, the only difference between immigration and birth is that birth takes longer. — Alex Tabarrok

If liberal government was to be saved, [the British people of 1940] would have to be the ones to save it. — Brooke C. Stoddard

Zaha Hadid's Maxxi Museum is proof that Rome and contemporary architecture are no longer a paradox. The building is characteristic Hadid - with curving lines and organic shapes - and the permanent collection already boasts works by Francesco Clemente, William Kentridge, and Gerhard Richter. — Amanda Hearst

I am making a collection of the things my opponents have found me to be and, when this election is over, I am going to open a museum and put them on display. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That's something that is almost part of being human, and I'm certain that will continue. — Sally Ride

Because of the long, long history of British shipping, immigration, trade, empire, missionaries, you can have a better shot at telling a worldwide story in the British Museum's collection than any other. Britain has been more connected with the rest of the world than any other country, for longer. — Neil MacGregor

When a man jumps out of a ten-story building, he doesn't break the law of gravity, he demonstrates it. — Adrian Rogers

In fact, if a museum were filled with all of the world's stolen artworks, it would be the most impressive collection ever created. It would have far more Baroque sculptures, much better Surrealist paintings, and the best Greek antiquities of any known institution. A gallery of stolen art would make the Louvre seem like a small-town gallery in comparison. Experts call it the Lost Museum. — Ulrich Boser

Gluten is just a term for things that are bad for you. Like calories or fat, that's all gluten." - Seth Rogen — David Sax

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye. — Robert Smithson

If we are to be honest as scientists... we must admit there may be a few things that we are not supposed to know — Jodi Picoult

i don't have any — Bob Marley

I was not only the first woman to become secretary of state, I was the first [U.S.] secretary of state of the 21st century. I was the first secretary of state to own a Web site, to visit Internet cafes, and to make Internet access a part of policy. — Madeleine Albright

A museum has to renew its collection to be alive, but that does not mean we give on important old works. — David Rockefeller

If you go to the Rijksmuseum, which I really wanted to do- but who are we kidding, neither of us can walk through a museum. But anyway, I looked at the collection online before we left. If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Nor. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there's no gory in illness. there is no meaning to it. There is no honour of dying of — John Green

Scientific data are not taken for museum purposes; they are taken as a basis for doing something. If nothing is to be done with the data, then there is no use in collecting any. The ultimate purpose of taking data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action. The step intermediate between the collection of data and the action is prediction. — W. Edwards Deming

The Thames could be thought of as England's longest archaeological site, and no fewer than 90,000 objects recovered from its foreshore are in the collection of the Museum of London, whose 30-year relationship with London mudlarks is both committed and highly regulated. — Jean Hanff Korelitz

Before hoarding became a phenomenon, people just called it "collecting" or "being nostalgic." I don't hoard, exactly, but I get it. It's a response to our need and desire for purpose, order, definition, and a fortress. It's a calling that requires constant management, control, and obsessive attention. I am amassing artifacts from the history of me. My garage is the storeroom and temporary exhibition hall of the yet-to-be-built museum documenting the rise and fall of the Marc Age. I am the curator. I decide the meaning and worth of the collection based on my feelings in a moment. — Marc Maron

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. It even lies coldly, and this lie crawls out of its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." This is a lie! The ones who created the peoples were the creators, they hung a faith and a love over them, and thus they served life. The ones who set traps for the many and call them "state" are annihilators, they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them. Where there are still peoples the state is not understood, and it is hated as the evil eye and the sin against customs and rights. This — Friedrich Nietzsche

Writing was a chimney for my blazing ambitions. — Storm Jameson

A collection that embraces the whole world allows you to consider the whole world. That is what an institution such as the British Museum is for. — Neil MacGregor