A racist system inevitably destroys and damages human beings; it brutalizes and dehumanizes them, blacks and whites alike.

In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate men.

I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room: except, perhaps, in the reading room of the British Museum.

The Cathedrals were built to the glory of God; New York was built to the glory of Mammon.

All great civilisations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.

No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow - and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals.

No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling... The desire to grasp and be united with another human is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgement of what is known as 'pure form' is inevitably influenced by it, and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot be hidden.