With him you could try anything—there was nothing you were told not to — Man Ray

"It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them."

"Throughout time painting has alternately been put to the service of the Church, the State, arms, individual patronage, scientific phenomena, anecdote and decoration … all the marvelous works that have been painted, whatever the sources of inspiration, still live for us because of absolute qualities they possess in common. The creative force and the expressiveness of painting reside materially in the colour and texture of pigments, in the possibilities of form invention and organisation, and in the flat plane on which these elements are brought into play."

"I have finally freed myself from the sticky medium of paint, and am working directly with light itself."

"One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy."

"A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him."

"Dont put my name on it. These are simply documents I make."

"The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe."

"The decades-long draconian approach of the international community to preventing drug dependence is now widely recognised to have been a human disaster, both in the failure to tackle the primary issue and for the additional human suffering caused, including the patients in moderate to severe pain who have been prevented from accessing essential medicines. We need politicians and policymakers to be courageous enough to admit that past policies were misguided, and to rebalance their priorities and approaches in ways that will reduce human suffering."

"O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge mens search To vaster issues."

"There is no question that religions have historically played the role of making people contented with their lot. ...such a doctrine would be very appealing to the ruling classes of a society. ...Many societies, for this reason alone, encourage the contentment with your lot that the religious premise of heaven affords."

"Value of a man depends upon his courage; his veracity depends upon his self-respect and his chastity depends upon his sense of honor."

"What counts most is holding on. The growth of a train of thought is not a direct forward flow. There is a succession of spurts separated by intervals of stagnation, frustration, and discouragement. If you hold on, there is bound to come a certain clarification. The unessential components drop off and a coherent, lucid whole begins to take shape."