A Quote by Simon Schama

What can art really do in the face of atrocity? — © Simon Schama
What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

Quote Topics

Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself - a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.
Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity.
Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.
We bear witness to the worst of human brutality, retweet what we have witnessed, and then we move on to the next atrocity. There is always more atrocity.
Many writers who have had to deal with the subject of atrocity can't face it head-on.
People always want to be on the right side of history; it is a lot easier to say, 'What an atrocity that was' then it is to say, 'What an atrocity this is.'
There is no such thing as an "atrocity" in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?
Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.
After all this atrocity, this is how human beings really pray.
For me, I would prefer to not have my face on the album cover. I don't mind being in the public, but it's just not really my personality, and it's not really why I'm into this. I like making art, and that's it. I don't really want to be a celebrity, seriously. I like my privacy.
It has always seemed to me the real art in this business is not so much moving information or guidance or policy five or 10,000 miles. That is an electronic problem. The real art is to move it the last three feet in face to face conversation.
I don't believe too much in originality... you learn art from other art and then looking into somebody's face or landscape is the point of departure to do your work of art.
Art can heal it if art is allowed to exist. And if art is slowly wiped off the face of the planet, then what tools do we have to reach people, to appeal to them and all of their senses?
It really has become the singular motivation in my life - to surrender to the art and to the free expression of what I may be experiencing in my life spiritually. It is really hard in the face of people who don't get it, but what do you do?
I'm not a big fan of guitar face. You know, when someone's playing guitar, and they make this really embarrassing face, like they smush their lips together and... they look you in the eye and it's really humiliating. You know some people have that really embarrassing guitar face? I remember thinking about this when I was doing the DJing, because... you do have to focus, and that's what happens, it's your focus face. But you're in a movie, so you should probably lock it up.
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