Few people can look at a painting longer than it takes to peel an orange and eat it.

The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire; it takes the most purely rational concept of which mankind is capable, mathematical order, and makes it a delight to the senses; and it takes the vague fears of the unknown and sweetens them by showing that the gods are like men and may be worshiped for their life-giving beauty rather than their death-dealing powers.

I just don't think the moon is going to be an adequate substitute for the fact that we haven't addressed ourselves to clearing up the slums.

Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself.

Sweeping, confident articles on the future seem to me, intellectually, the most disreputable of all forms of public utterance.

It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.

Racial prejudices are indication of a disturbed and potentially unstable society.