My whole life has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against Reaction and the death of art.
Pablo PicassoRead
Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it...myself included.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Focus your energy on one passion to achieve greatness.
In this quote, Pablo Picasso emphasizes the importance of channeling one's energy into a singular passion or pursuit, in his case, painting. He suggests that individuals often waste their potential by spreading themselves too thin across various activities, while true mastery and success come from dedicating oneself completely to a singular goal, even at the cost of other interests or aspects of life.
Themes
EnergyFocusPassionDedicationArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about creativity, one might say, 'As Picasso once expressed, everybody has the same energy potential, yet it is how we focus that energy that defines our art.'
More from Pablo Picasso
All quotes →Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
Pablo PicassoRead
In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.
Pablo PicassoRead
He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.
Pablo PicassoRead
You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
Pablo PicassoRead
I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.
Pablo PicassoRead
Similar quotes
To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.
Anne LamottRead
If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.
Sydney PollackRead
Comic-book pages are vertical, and movie screens are relentlessly horizontal. But it's all the same form. We use different tools, but we get the job done. I'm completely in love with CGI. It's great for conveying a cartoonist's sense of reality.
Frank MillerRead
What interests me is the opportunity for all of us to become something different from what we are, by constructing spaces that contribute something to the experience of who we are.
Richard SerraRead
I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.
Leonard CohenRead
The artist is not a man who describes, but a man who feels.
E. E. CummingsRead