+85 Quotes from Dalí – About ART, LIFE and DREAMS

The greatest misfortune of today’s youth is no longer belonging to it.

I am a living and controlled delirium.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewelry: the one that seems most real, the most brilliant, is always false.

If I die, I won’t die at all.

Happy is he who causes a scandal.

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

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

You can’t expel me, I am Surrealism!

Man cannot change or escape his time. The eye sees the present and the future.

Painting is an infinitely tiny part of my personality.

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 dig deeper: it’s the molecules and the acids.

I believe that life should be a continuous party.

Everything upsets me, but nothing changes me.

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

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

The only difference between me and a crazy person is that I’m not crazy.

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

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

The clown is not me, but that society so monstrously cynical and unconsciously naive that plays a serious role to disguise its madness.

The one thing the world will never get tired of is hype.

There is nothing more surreal than reality.

He who wants to interest others has to provoke them.

When you are a genius, we have no right to die, since we are needed for the progress of humanity.

Don’t be afraid of perfection; you will never reach it

I don’t take drugs. I am a drug.

Freedom of any kind is the worst thing for creativity.

I am much more interested in talking, or being in contact with people who think the opposite of what I think, than with those who think the same as I think.

God is just another artist. Like me.

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

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

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

The true painter is 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 tumults of history.

Drawing is the honesty of art. There is no possibility of cheating. Is good or bad.

A painting is a photograph made by hand.

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

Knowing how to look is a way of inventing.

Just because I don’t know the meaning of my art doesn’t mean I don’t have it.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to limit our vision.

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

People love mystery, that’s why they love my paintings.

Instead of stubbornly trying to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, we should try to make some surrealism as solid, complete and classic as the works in museums.

The audience doesn’t need to know if I’m joking or serious, any more than I need to know.

I am a contradictory and paradoxical man.

I believe that the time is near when by an active and paranoid method of thinking, it is possible to systematize the confusion and contribute to the total discredit of the world of reality.

Don’t worry about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, no matter what you do, cannot be avoided.

Genius has to rise above madness and madness rise above genius.

Since the French Revolution, a vicious and cretinous tendency has developed to consider a genius as a human being equal in every way to others.

I don’t understand why when I order grilled lobster at a restaurant they never serve me a cooked phone.

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

The envy of other painters has always been a thermometer of my success.

Let my enemies devour each other.

Very little of what could happen actually happens.

There are only two bad things that can happen to you in life: being Pablo Picasso or not being Salvador Dalí.

Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.

I am the opposite of fables. Especially that of the wolf and the lamb; When I threaten a project, I am believed no matter how absurd it may be.

If I were less intelligent, I would undoubtedly paint much better.

It is easy to recognize if the man has taste: the rug should match the eyebrows.

I’ll be brief, I’m done.

A true artist is not someone inspired, but one who inspires others.

The Russian Revolution is the French Revolution that arrived late because of the cold.

I am the first to be surprised and often terrified by the images I see appear on my canvas.

There is no way I will return to Mexico. I can’t stand being in a country more surreal than my paintings.

I declare the independence of the imagination and the right of man to his own madness.

I have an absolute and relative price, but I am slowly approaching my relative price. To put it clearly: I am more expensive every day.

Give me two hours of activity a day and I’ll spend the remaining twenty-two hours dreaming.

To buy my paintings you have to be criminally rich… like Americans.

What matters is sowing confusion, not eliminating it.

Those who do not want to imitate anything produce nothing.

Time is one of the few important things we have left.

The least that can be asked of a sculpture is that it not move.

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.

I’m not strange… I’m just not normal.

While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in the other.

Bad taste is creative. It is the dominance of biology over intelligence.

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images.

Repulsion is the sentinel that guards the door to everything we most desire.

Life is too short to go unnoticed.

Start by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do whatever you want; everyone will respect you.

The famous soft watches are nothing more than the tender, extravagant, lonely Camembert, paranoid critic of time and space.

People imprisoned me and my life became divine. Tremendous!

It will always be you and me.