Andre Malraux quotes

“An art book is a museum without walls.”

— Andre Malraux

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”

— Andre Malraux

“To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.”

— Andre Malraux

“Man knows that the world is not made on a human scale; and he wishes that it were.”

— Andre Malraux

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.”

— Andre Malraux

“Then I despair... I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always.”

— Andre Malraux

“There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.”

— Andre Malraux

“Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate.”

— Andre Malraux

“The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.”

— Andre Malraux

“Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.”

— Andre Malraux

“Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real.”

— Andre Malraux

“And when man faces destiny, destiny ends and man comes into his own.”

— Andre Malraux

“Communism destroys democracy. Democracy can also destroy Communism.”

— Andre Malraux

“War puts its questions stupidly, peace mysteriously.”

— Andre Malraux

“Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only.”

— Andre Malraux

“The crucial discovery was made that, in order to become painting, the universe seen by the artist had to become a private one created by himself.”

— Andre Malraux

“There are not fifty ways of fighting, there's only one, and that's to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases.”

— Andre Malraux

“The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves is what I call hell.”

— Andre Malraux

“To the humblest among them, who may be listening to me now, I want to say that the masterpiece to which you are paying historic homage this evening is a painting which he has saved.”

— Andre Malraux