A Quote by Alexis de Tocqueville

History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Quote Topics

Containing Copies Easily Few Gallery History Host Originals Perceived Picture Very

Quote Author

Alexis de Tocqueville
French - Historian
July 29, 1805 - April 16, 1859

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Not infrequently, we encounter copies of important human beings; and here, too, as in the case of paintings, most people prefer the copies to the originals.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.

Joseph Addison

The more you are like yourself, the less you are like anyone else which makes you unique. The problem with most people is that they spend their lives trying to emulate others and so we have lots of copies but few originals.

Walt Disney

Born Originals, how comes it to pass that we die Copies?

Edward Young

There are more copies than originals among people.

Pablo Picasso

We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?

Edward Young

We live in a world of copies and we're fascinated when we encounter the originals (in a museum, for instance).

Susan Sontag

God makes originals not carbon copies. It's okay to be inspired by someone, but be bold enough to be yourself.

Tony Gaskins

The only good copies are those which make us see the absurdity of bad originals.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Keep the faith. Whatever that may be. Don't get too depressed yet, because I have a belief in America being very diverse and ornery, and containing a lot of people who are not going to roll over very easily for a totalitarian dictatorship. That is what I think.

Margaret Atwood

The first exhibition that I used bright colours in painting the room was at a gallery in Paris, and there were seven rooms in the gallery. It was very nice gallery, not very big rooms, around the courtyard, it was a very French space. So I painted each room in different colour. When people came to the exhibition, I saw they came with a smile. Everybody smiles - this is something I never saw in my work before.

Michael Craig-Martin

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

Howard Hodgkin

I was recently interviewed for radio in relation to the "Thanksgiving" show [2001] at the Saatchi gallery that I was part of. The interviewer said that people in London were very disturbed that I showed a picture of myself battered ("Nan One Month after Being Battered", 1984) and they thought that I set it up. I was accused of deliberately putting on a wig for that particular picture.

Nan Goldin

I read a lot of social history. If I'm in an art gallery and a picture intrigues me, I immediately write down the title and I google it. I do a lot of googling and looking out for good stories. I can almost smell them sometimes.