"Bright-minded young people think poorly of existing institutions and want to abolish them. Well, one doesn't need to be young to dislike institutions. But the dreary fact remains that, even in the darkest ages, it was institutions that made society work, and if civilisation is to survive society must somehow be made to work.At this point I reveal myself in my true colours, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 13: Heroic Materialism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kenneth_Clark
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark of Saltwood, OM, CH, KCB, FBA (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was an English art historian and director of London's National Gallery (1934–1945) who is remembered for his television series Civilisation first broadcast in 1969.
48 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Kenneth Clark →
Related Quotes
"As for the Messiah, it is, like Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, one of those rare works that appeal immediately to e…"
"In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate…"
"Those who wish, in the interest of morality, to reduce Leonardo, that inexhaustible source of creative power, to a ne…"
"Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal b…"
"Evidently one cannot look for long at the Last Supper without ceasing to study it as a composition, and beginning to …"
"To Leonardo a landscape, like a human being, was part of a vast machine, to be understood part by part and, if possib…"
"Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself."
"It is widely supposed that the naked human body is in itself an object upon which the eye dwells with pleasure and wh…"
"The various parts of the body cannot be perceived as simple units and have no clear relationship to one another. In a…"
"Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of western man. It could not have been foresee…"