Problems and Solutions

     The remaining questions — all too common by now — probed my opinions of America. Many of their rosy-eyed perceptions of the land of plenty, milk and honey, were beyond my critical and sharp words. Many had already been fooled by the pop culture media machine which permeated their culture, even now. I tried to diffuse their perceptions of abundance with American homelessness; their perceptions of wealth with America’s war on drugs; and their illusory book-filled schools with the 135,000 handguns found there each year. I tried to explain that the United States was a nation setting ourselves up for a painful fall. We had a legal system, not a justice system; we were a republic not a democracy; over 61 million Americans couldn’t even write a complete, grammatically correct sentence….
— John D. Ivanko, The Least Imperfect Path, pp. 116-117.

     I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.
— Thomas Jefferson.

     Jones: You seem to see art as a kind of struggle. What do you feel are the responsibilities of the artist in this combat?
     Lipchitz: It’s quite a question — quite a question. It’s very difficult to explain. But when I am working I feel related to the entire cosmos. By the rhythm of my work I am related to time; by the volume of space I am related to space; by the subject matter I’m related to the human being with all his sufferings and all his joys and hopes; and by my creative abilities I am related to the Creator of everything — to our Lord Himself. So you can conclude what kind of responsibility an artist should have….
— Jacques Lipchitz, from an interview in Wisdom: Conversations with the Elder Wise Men of Our Day, James Nelson (ed.), pp. 271-272.

     I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of “work,” because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don’t always want to do. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.
— Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again), p. 96.

     I really look awful, and I never bother to primp up or try to be appealing because I just don’t want anyone to get involved with me. And that’s the truth. I play down my good features and play up the bad ones. So I look awful and I wear the wrong pants and the wrong shoes and I come at the wrong time and with the wrong friends, and I say the wrong things and I talk to the wrong person, and then still sometimes somebody gets interested and I freak out and I wonder, “What did I do wrong?” So then I go home and try to figure it out. “Well I must be wearing something that somebody thinks is attractive. I’d better change it. Before things get too far. So I go over to my three-way mirror and I study myself and I see that I have fifteen new pimples on my face and ordinarily that should have stopped them. So I think, “How weird. I know I look bad. I made myself look especially bad — especially wrong — because I knew a lot of the right people would be there, and still someone somehow got interested . . . ” Then I start to panic because I think I don’t know what’s attractive that I should eliminate before it starts causing me any more trouble. You see, to get to know one more person is just too hard, because each new person takes up more time and space. The way to keep some of your time to yourself is to maintain yourself so unattractively that nobody else is interested in any of it.
— Andy Warhol, Ibid., pp. 113-114.