The 78 best quotes by Salvador Dalí

An eccentric and unrepeatable genius. Here are his best quotes.

Salvador Dalí (Figueras, 1904 - 1989) was an unrepeatable genius. This Spanish painter developed like no one else the expression of surrealism in his various pictorial and sculptural works.

Based on the world of dreams and the unconscious, Dalí was an eccentric who embraced every imaginable artistic facet: painting, sculpture, cinema, writing, photography... His personal style is still remembered for being one of the most versatile and remarkable artists of the 20th century.

Salvador Dalí's Famous Quotes and Phrases

In today's article we wanted to delve into the figure and thoughts of this master, so we wanted to compile the 78 best phrases of Salvador Dalí about life, painting, art and love. A great overview of the personality of this self-described megalomaniac.

Without further ado, here are his best reflections.

1. I'm doing things that inspire me with deep emotion and I'm trying to paint honestly.

A statement about his artistic approach.

2. Happy is the one who causes a scandal.

His irreverence was embodied in each of his public appearances.

3. Eroticism, hallucinogenic drugs, nuclear science, Gaudi's gothic architecture, my love for gold... there is a common denominator in all of that: God is present in everything. The same magic is at the heart of all things, and all paths lead to the same revelation: we are the children of God, and the whole universe tends towards the perfection of humanity.

On his religious faith.

4. Don't worry about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, cannot be avoided.

An ironic sentence about the eagerness of some people to follow fashion.

5. Painting is an infinitely tiny part of my personality.

Megalomaniac and narcissist like few others, I always had a great way out for all the journalists' questions.

6. Picasso is a painter, like me; Picasso is Spanish, like me; Picasso is a communist, I am not.

Dalí was rather right-wing and conservative.

7. The true painter must be able to have, with the most unusual things, the most unusual ideas.

Creativity to the power of art. Without limits or restrictions.

8. Everything alters me, but nothing changes me.

Imperturbable in spite of everything.

9. For me, love must be ugly, appearance must be divine and death must be beautiful.

An aesthetic consideration for each of these facets of life.

10. I'll be brief, I'm done.

Ironic phrase.

11. I don't understand why when I order grilled lobster in a restaurant they never serve me a cooked phone.

In reference to one of his works.

12. The secret of my influence has always been that it was kept secret.

No one knows it yet.

13. It is not necessary for the public to know if I am joking or if I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know.

Creativity and verbosity as allies.

14. The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.

He only pretended to be during his whole life.

15. Knowing how to look is a way of inventing.

Another perspective can generate art.

16. At the age of six he wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

I became better known, almost, than the French emperor.

17. The thermometer of success is simply the envy of the discontented.

The higher you are, the more you will be criticized.

18. A true artist is not the one who inspires himself, but the one who inspires others.

Setting a trend is always an achievement.

19. I don't take drugs. I am a drug.

His paintings certainly provoked a lysergic state.

20. Freedom of any kind is the worst thing for creativity.

A disconcerting phrase of the Catalan genius.

21. What matters is to sow confusion, not to eliminate it.

The more abstract, the more cause for confusion.

22. Geniuses must never die, the progress of humanity depends on us.

One of those phrases of Salvador Dalí in which he places artists in a central role.

23. I am able to project myself in my little internal cinema. I free myself through a secret exit from the attempts to besiege my own soul.

Creative phrase of the great Dalí.

24. Surrealism served as a demonstration that total sterility and attempts at automation have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system.

Few artists can endow their work with such a broad meaning.

25. Every time I lose a little sperm I am totally convinced that I have wasted it. I always feel guilty afterwards... Since I'm not that impotent to begin with.

Hilarious and mysterious statement.

26. Murder is closer to heaven, because after becoming "memories of our conscience," one prays, heaven opens, and the angels say, "Good morning!"

Famous quote of poetic cut.

27. To be interesting, one has to provoke.

If you don't provoke anything, don't even try.

28. Those who do not want to imitate anything, do not produce anything.

To look at others is the key to start rolling.

29. There is only one difference between me and a madman. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I'm crazy.

About his deteriorating sanity.

30. I'm going to live forever. Geniuses don't die.

The impact on art history was, in the end, greater than he himself predicted.

31. Just as I am surprised that a bank clerk never eats a check, I am also surprised that no painter before me ever thought of painting a soft watch.

32. People love mystery, and that's why they love my paintings.

They are simply full of great intellectual interest.

33. When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is no doubt that he is in error.

34. It will always be you and me.

To his muse, Gala.

35. Drawing is the honesty of art.

A beautiful conception of painting.

36. And now the announcement of Watson and Crick about DNA. This is for me the real proof of the existence of God.

For Dalí, the Biological perfection of DNA could not imply anything other than the existence of a supreme being.

37. Genius has to pass over madness and madness over genius.

A necessary ambivalence to create.

38. I believe that life must be a continuous party.

It is only life if it is worthy of being lived.

39. I am not strange. I'm just not normal.

An eccentric like few others.

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

Intoxicated with happiness, Dalí had fun with his bizarre life.

41. One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have baptized as 'reality' is an illusion even greater than the world of dreams.

A philosophical note by the great Dalí.

42. Do not fear perfection, you will never attain it.

It is an ideal that cannot be sustained.

43. I believe that the moment is near when by a method of active and paranoid thinking, it is possible to systematize the confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.

Great artistic phrase to reflect on.

44. You have to create confusion in a systematic way, so creativity is released. Everything that is contradictory creates life.

In incoherence is the magic, the desire.

45. Surrealism is destructive, but it only destroys what it considers to be chains that limit our vision.

This is the opinion of probably the main representative of this artistic current.

46. Give me two hours a day of activity, and I will follow the other twenty-two in dreams.

His greatest inspiration, the world of dreams.

47. Every morning when I wake up, I experience once again a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí.

A sample of his egocentrism.

48. Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

If you have no aspirational goals, your intelligence is of little use.

49. The pleasure of the flesh can only be satisfied if a particular dimension is created, a kind of stereoscopic phenomenon, an imaginary hologram as real as reality is.

An artistic way of referring to sex.

50. A great wine requires a madman to make the vine grow, a wise man to watch over it, a lucid poet to make it, and a lover to drink it.

This is a real praise to the world of wine.

51. Without me there is no art.

One of his most narcissistic statements.

52. I need all these sudden images that present themselves to me from my past and that form the fabric of what my whole life is.

Based on flashes he built his reality.

53. Today, the taste for the defect is such that only the imperfections and especially the ugliness seem great. When a Venus looks like a toad, contemporary pseudo-aesthetes exclaim: It's strong, it's human!

On the rare fashions of the moment.

54. Where is the real? All appearance is fallacious, the visible surface is deceptive. I look at my hand. They are nerves, muscles, bones. Let's go deeper: they are molecules and acids.

A detailed vision on the planes of reality.

55. I am surrealism.

At least, he was one of its greatest representatives.

56. It is obvious when my enemies, my friends and the general public pretend not to understand the meaning of the images that come to me and that I transcribe in my paintings.

Almost all of Dalí's symbols were inspired by the dream world.

57. I think I am a better writer than a painter, and in this I agree with my father. What is important in my writing is not the style, nor the syntax, nor the discursive resources. The important thing about my writing is simply what I say, and the day will come when that will be accepted.

His literary content has never been as recognized as his paintings, anyway.

58. Since the French Revolution there has developed a vicious and cretinous tendency to regard a genius as a human being equal in every way to all others.

What do geniuses have in common?

59. I categorically refuse to consider surrealism as another literary artistic group. I believe that they were able to free man from the tyranny of the "practical and rational" world.

On the relevance of this artistic movement.

60. The difference between false and true memories is the same as for jewels: it is always false the one that seems more real, the most brilliant.

A paradox that could be explained by Elizabeth Loftus.

61. The true painter is the one who is capable of painting extraordinary scenes in the middle of an empty desert. The true painter is the one who is able to patiently paint a pear surrounded by the tumult of history.

On the capacity for abstraction.

62. One might think that through ecstasy we enter a world far from reality and dreams. The repugnant become desirable, affection becomes cruelty, the ugly becomes beautiful, etc.

On the curious effects of this drug called ecstasy.

63. The difference between false and true memories is the same as for jewels: it is always false that which seems most real, most brilliant.

Easily observable.

64. Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am the hallucinogen.

In reference to himself.

65. The connoisseur does not drink wine, but he knows its secrets.

One of Salvador Dalí's most famous and remembered phrases.

66. Life is too short to go unnoticed.

If you do not leave your mark, perhaps you are not giving life the importance it deserves.

67. Without madness there is no art.

Without more: a genius must have a unique look.

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

To know in order to understand, to understand in order to control.

69. The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic feelings.

This is how the great Dalí defined it.

70. It is good taste and only good taste that has the power to sterilize and is always the first obstacle to any creative functioning.

Elegance and its benefits.

71. Wars have never hurt anyone except the people who die.

A paradox to reflect upon.

72. Democratic societies are not suitable for the publication of thunderous revelations such as the ones I am in the habit of making.

Puritanism spreads when people only want to hear the obvious.

73. Drugs consume but so does life.

A way of downplaying the effects of drugs.

74. The connoisseur does not drink wine, but knows its secrets.

To know in order to observe. Dalí's philosophy of life.

75. Life is short, but not brief.

Paradox to think.

76. Very little of what could happen happens.

In fact, what does happen is only one option among an infinite number.

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

Leisure as the supreme good to which we should aspire.

78. There comes a moment in every person's life when he realizes that he adores me.

Another phrase of narcissism with a large dose of humor.