People From Philadelphia

"Whitman: And Eakins - What of Tom Eakins. He is here. Haven't you something to say to us Eakins? Eakins: I am not a speaker. Whitman: So much the better — you are more likely to say something."

"I want to see the gardens and palace of the Alcazar where the Moorish Kings used to live. It is as perfect an architecture as the Egyptian, Greek or Gothic and just as beautiful, maybe more beautiful and it is well built for it looks as new as if it had just been done. We have to thanks these Moors for our greatest sciences, they did the big work for us, they started them, Algebra, Chemistry, Astronomy. They are our masters."

"If America is to produce great painters and if young artists wish to assume a place in the history of the art of their country, their first desire should be to remain in America to peer deeper into the heart of American life, rather than spend their time abroad obtaining a superficial view of the art of the Old World. In the days when I studied abroad conditions were entirely different. The facilities for study in this country were meagre. There were even no life classes in our art schools and schools of painting. Naturally one had to seek instruction elsewhere, abroad. Today we need not do that."

"Strain your brain more than your eye... You can copy a thing to a certain limit. Then you must use intellect."

"I once painted a concert singer and on the chestnut frame I carved the opening bars of Mendelssohn's "Rest in the Lord." It was ornamental unobtrusive and to musicians I think it emphasized the expression of the face and pose of the figure."

"I have never discovered that the nude could be studied in any way except the way I have adopted. All the muscles must be pointed out. To do this all the drapery must be removed."

"On the lines of the mighty and simple strains dominating the movement, and felt intuitively and studied out by him, the master artist groups with full intention, his muscular forms. No detail contradicts. His men and animals live. Such is the work of three or four modern artists. Such was the work of many an old Greek sculptor."

"I taught in the Academy from the opening of the schools until I was turned out, a period much longer than I should have permitted myself to remain there. My honors are misunderstanding, persecution and neglect, enhanced because unsought."

"I desire to sever all connection with the Society of American Artists. In deference to some of its older members, who perhaps from sentimental motives requested me to reconsider my resignation last year, I shall explain... For the last three years my paintings have been rejected by you, one of them the Agnew portrait, a composition more important than any I have ever seen on your walls. Rejection for three years eliminates all elements of chance, and while in my opinion there are qualities in my work which entitle it to rank with the best in your Society, your Society's opinion must be that it ranks below much that I consider frivolous and superficial. These opinions are irreconcilable."

"As some of you know, I some years ago — a few — painted a picture of Mr. Whitman. I began in the usual way, but soon found that the ordinary methods wouldn't do — that technique, rules and traditions would have to be thrown aside; that before all else, he was to be treated as a man, whatever became of what are commonly called the principles of art."

"In pursuance of my business and professional studies, I use the naked model. A number of my women pupils have for economy studied from each others' figures, and of these some have obtained from time to time my criticism on their work. I have frequently used as models for myself my male pupils: very rarely female pupils and then only with the knowledge and consent of their mothers. One of the women pupils some years ago gave to her lover who communicated it to Mr. Frank Stephens a list of these pupils as far as she knew them, and since that time Mr. Frank Stephens has boasted to witnesses of the power which this knowledge gave him to turn me out of the Academy, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, & the Academy Art Club, and of his intention to drive me from the city."

"I have seen big painting here. When I had looked at all the paintings by all the masters I had known I could not help saying to myself all the time, it's very pretty but it's not all yet. It ought to be better, but now I have seen what I always thought ought to have been done and what did not seem to me impossible. O what satisfaction it gave me to see the good Spanish work so good so strong so reasonable so free from every affectation. It stands out like nature itself."

"A teacher can do very little for a pupil and should only be thankful if he don't hinder him, and the greater the master, mostly the less he can say."

"In a big picture you can see what o'clock it is afternoon or morning if it's hot or cold winter or summer & what kind of people are there & what they are doing and why they are doing it. The sentiments run beyond words. If a man makes a hot day he makes it like a hot day he once saw or is seeing if a sweet face a face he once saw or which he imagines from old memories or parts of memories & his knowledge and he combines never creates but at the very first combination no man & less of all himself could ever disentangle the feelings that animated him just then & refer each one to its right place."

"The big artist does not sit down monkey like & copy a coal scuttle or an ugly old woman like some Dutch painters have done nor a dungpile, but he keeps a sharp eye on Nature & steals her tools. He learns what she does with light the big tool & then colour then form and appropriates them to his own use. Then he's got a canoe of his own smaller than Nature's but big enough for every purpose except to paint the midday sun which is not beautiful at all. It is plenty strong enough though to make midday sunlight or the setting sun if you know how to handle it. With this canoe he can sail parallel to Nature's sailing. He will soon be sailing only where he wants to selecting nice little coves & shady shores or storms to his own liking, but if ever he thinks he can sail another fashion from Nature or make a better shaped boat he'll capsize or stick in the mud & nobody will buy his pictures or sail with him in his old tub."

"When a man paints a naked woman he gives her less than poor Nature did. I can conceive of few circumstances wherein I would have to paint a woman naked, but if I did I would not mutilate her for double the money. She is the most beautiful thing there is — except a naked man, but I never saw a study of one exhibited."

"We appreciate politeness when we are far from home. We may have different ideas of the word. An incivility or supposed incivility in a strange land cuts very deep and even a great or unlooked for kindness almost brings tears for one is apt to say to himself you are very good but maybe its because I'm a stranger, and he is forcibly reminded of home where kindness is taken thoughtlessly as a matter of course. Impressions are stronger away from home as you have discerned. If by politeness then is meant goodness, it is appreciated by me as I trust it always has been, but if it is to mean the string of ceremonies generally used for concealing ill nature, and which have been found necessary to the existence of every society whose members are wanting in self respect and morality, I detest it more than ever. I have often used the word in both these acceptations, but I don't like it. My prominent idea of a polite man is one who is nothing but polish. It is an unenviable reputation. If there was anything else in him the polish would never be noticed. He is a bad drawing finely worked up, and Gérôme says that every attempt at finish on a bad design serves only to make the work more contemptible."

"People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs."

"Some of my best friends are men. It is simply that I think women are superior to men. There, I've said it. It's my dirty little secret. [...] The other day, a very wise friend of mine asked "Have you ever noticed that what passes as a terrific man would only be an adequate woman?" A Roman candle went off in my head; she was absolutely right. What I expect from my male friends is that there are polite and clean. What I expect from my female friends is unconditional love, the ability to finish my sentences for me when I am sobbing, and the ability to tell me why the meat thermometer isn't supposed to touch the bone."

"If men got pregnant, there would be safe, reliable methods of birth control. They'd be inexpensive, too."

"Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying."

"People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it."

"Here is the real domino theory: Gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you."

"Werner Erhard, a former used-car salesman, made millions with EST, but it turned out to be just another moneymaking scam disguised as a form of therapy."

"Erhard’s influence extends far beyond the couple of million people who have done his courses."

"Erhard is the man who more or less invented the personal growth movement in California in the early 1970s."

"Erhard’s exact whereabouts have been somewhat vague these past 20 years, since he was hounded out of the US after some of the worst publicity a man can have, involving allegations of incest, tax fraud and abuse. Even though these were all dropped, he tells me he left the country on his solicitor’s advice and has been based in the Caribbean ever since."

"I became convinced we should work to get this kind of transformational material into the academies,” he said, adding that he considers Mr. Erhard “one of the great intellectuals of the century."

"In the first place, est-Forum was primarily a business, efficiently directed by its founder and head Werner Erhard for the purpose of making a profit. Indeed, the internal discipline of the organization was so strong that its style of operation has been labeled as fascist."

"The American obsession with Transformation isn’t new. It’s about as old as the nation. In the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson preached about tapping into the “infinitude of man.” Norman Vincent Peale was an early bestselling self-help author with The Power of Positive Thinking in 1952. But it was Werner Erhard who created the first modern transformation when he founded est seminars in 1971. It’s a tribute to the power of his central concept that more than 20 years after he sold his ideas to a group of employees Landmark is still the natural first stop in any transformation tour."

"“I met Hawking and Gerard’t Hooft in the attic of Werner Erhard’s house where Erhard’s office was located in San Francisco. … Dick Feynman, myself, and David Finkelstein were Erhard’s gurus. … He was very, very smart.”"

"Erhard maintains that he had a clear business purpose for engaging in the transactions because he desired to terminate his relationship with Margolis... However, even if Erhard had a legitimate business purpose for terminating his relationship with Margolis, that did not give him a business purpose for engaging in the specific transactions at issue here. The fact that he may have had a good business reason for separating from Margolis does not necessarily justify resorting to circular money movements (that just happened to create tax benefits) to effectuate that separation."

"Est came to an end in the early nineties when critical stories began appearing in the Bay Area. These newspaper reports detailed Erhard's violent temper and included charges that he beat his wife and molested his children. The low point was a March 3, 1991, segment on the CBS program 60 Minutes that interviewed three of his daughters about the alleged abuse. (Erhard denied it.) After an hour of 60 Minutes, Erhard was as dead as Audi. One might have thought that Werner Erhard, the company, was beyond saving. Not true. The name was destroyed, but not the company. Before the CBS program ran, but with knowledge of what it would likely say, Erhard sold the assets of Werner Erhard & Associates to his former employees and moved to Costa Rica. The new name: Landmark Education Corporation."

"I am a sort of revolutionary. I have a strange ambition, though. I don’t want any statues. What I want is for the world to work. I want to create a context in which government, education, and families are nurturing. I want to en­able, to empower, the institutions of man. Social transformation doesn’t argue against social change. Radicalism and resistance produce obvious values. But after a while, social change chases its own tail. Social change just produces social change. After most ordinary revolutions, after most social change, the world still doesn’t work. For the world to work you must have social transformation, which creates the space for effective social change."

"I got a lot of benefit from auditing. It was the fastest and deepest way to handle situations that I had yet encountered. I immediately wanted to learn to do it. … With Scientology, I was able to characterize the Mind more accurately, and to cease justifying it. This greatly clarified what I was doing. … After my experience with Scientology, I saw what it means to see the Mind as a machine. I can now operate my Mind accordingly, with exactitude. I can do the familiar mind over matter experiments - the control of pain and bleeding, telepathy, those things. Many people can do such things, and they are well known in the yogic tradition."

"Obviously the truth is what's so. Not so obviously, it is also so what."

"Of all the disciplines that I studied, practiced, learned, Zen was the essential one. It was not so much an influence on me, rather it created space. It allowed those things that were there to be there. It gave some form to my experience. And it built up in me the critical mass from which was kindled the experience that produced est."

"Does it really work for us to go through our lives as though there were no realizations beyond the grasp of our system-of-concepts, the awareness of which would transform the quality of our lives?"

"Love for a person is acceptance of him or her the way he is and the way he is not."

"The moment when you really experience that you have created yourself being whatever way you are, at that same moment you will never have to be that way again."

"[[Alan Watts|[Alan] Watts]] did two main things for me. He opened up the connections between what I was doing and the traditional Oriental philosophies. And he pointed me toward the distinction between Self and Mind."

"To take a stand for the future is to bring forth a new opportunity, not one derived from the past, but an opportunity created from a future to which we give ourselves."

"At all times and under all circumstances, we have the power to transform the quality of our lives."

"Werner Erhard is virtually the only consciousness leader, and the only person of distinction in American society to have stepped outside this childish quarrel between Scientology and society and to have acknowledged both his indebtedness to Hubbard and his emphatic differences with him."

"“I credit Werner Erhard as one of the founders of contemporary coaching. Werner Erhard introduced the idea of transformation in the early 1970s through his est courses which opened people’s minds to the possibility of their growth and potential.""

"Without Carl Rogers and Werner Erhard coaching would not exist."

"Werner Erhard is at once a thoughtful student of, and contributor to, the continuing philosophical dialogue that has cradled the world civilization in which we all dwell today. Unlike many philosophers and students of philosophy, he not only originates and develops ideas, but also profoundly touches people with them- thereby transforming people’s experience of what is possible for human beings and their ability to act on that possibility."

"You can either have reasons or results."

"Happiness is a function of accepting what is."

"What I recognized is that you can't put it together. It's already together, and what you have to do is experience it being together."