QuoteProject
In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.
Salvador Dali
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Embrace your talent and individuality while challenging societal norms.

Salvador Dali's quote emphasizes the importance of utilizing one's unique talents to challenge and provoke societal expectations, especially in youth. He suggests that true respect in society comes not from conforming, but from asserting one's individuality and creativity, even if it means facing backlash or being considered arrogant thereafter.

Themes

TalentSocietyRespectIndividualityCreativity

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about art and innovation, one might say, 'As Dali suggested, we must challenge societal norms with our talents.'

More from Salvador Dali

There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.
Salvador DaliRead
Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health. However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?" Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches.
Salvador DaliRead
Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life, let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating, on condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul - let my unformed childhood soul, as it ages, assume the rational and esthetic forms of an architecture, let me learn just everything that others cannot teach me, what only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin!
Salvador DaliRead
The problem with the youth of today' is that one is no longer part of it.
Salvador DaliRead
You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life
Salvador DaliRead
All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.
Salvador DaliRead

Similar quotes

The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow.
Kurt VonnegutRead
People ask me why my figures have to be so black. There are a lot of reasons. First, the blackness is a rhetorical device. When we talk about ourselves as a people and as a culture, we talk about black history, black culture, black music. That's the rhetorical position we occupy.
Kerry James MarshallRead
To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.
Laurence SterneRead
It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.
Walker PercyRead
Our language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see what the tongue cannot possibly describe.
Anne RiceRead
I came to the realization that I can also satisfy my creative side by giving somebody else a chance. I don't have to be in front of the camera for every project.
Michael B. JordanRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.