First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"Some want painting to "amuse" them; it was not to improvise fairground attractions that X-rays were discovered."
"Painting doesn't have to be crazy to be good."
"It is easier to surprise than to remember."
"Being honest in art is the surest way to be exceptional."
"A definition of pictorial art: "Life united with style.""
"Originality at all costs has been as harmful to painting for thirty years as the Ecole des Beaux-Arts has always been."
"You have to be yourself; not everyone is a Michelangelo or a Mignard."
"How is it that painting the only art form that any ignorant person allows himself to judge?"
"To seduce most writers, painting must be literary, that is to say, on the borders of the bad."
"In a world where killers know their craft so well, it probably doesn't matter if artists ignore theirs."
"Life has only one excuse: the dream."
"It is necessary in our time to brave the ridiculous to be honest."
"A revolutionary painting is not necessarily a revolting painting."
"Success is usually the exploitation of a weakness."
"Painters know what painting really is, but few admit it."
"Our era has believed that talent is about finding new ways of expression; we take appearance for reality."
"Honesty is the luxury of patients."
"There are times when, to appear original, it is not enough to be."
"The tragedy of modern life is not the harshness of the struggle, but its mediocrity."
"We do not prepare for the future by destroying the past, but by continuing it."
"Each painter really loves only one painting, the one he would like to make."
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.