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Leonardo Quotes

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Leonardo Quotes

“Within the time span of a single generation surrounding the year 1500, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael created their many masterworks of the High Renaissance, revealing the birth of the new human as much in da Vinci's multiform genius and the godlike incarnations of the David and the Sistine Creation of Adam as in the new perspectival objectivity and poietic empowerment of the Renaissance artist; Columbus sailed west and reached America, Vasco da Gama sailed east and reached India, and the Magellan expedition circumnavigated the globe, opening the world forever to itself; Luther posted his theses on the door of the Wittenberg castle church and began the enormous convulsion of Europe and the Western psyche called the Reformation; and Copernicus conceived the heliocentric theory and began the even more momentous Scientific Revolution. From this instant, the human self, the known world, the cosmos, heaven and earth were all radically and irrevocably transformed. All this happened within a period of time briefer than that which has passed since Woodstock and the Moon landing. (p. 4)”

“I had this extraordinarily bizarre moment when, two Fridays ago, my missus gave birth to our second child at 11am and by the same time the following day I was sitting around a table with Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in Rabat in Morocco, rehearsing a scene we were going to shoot the next day.”

“Leonardo is the most incredible actor, on the planet, with a couple of people alongside him. Getting to act with him is just [amazing]. I walked away from my audition for that and I couldn't believe that I'd been acting with him. I've worked with amazing people, but my friends freak out that I'm working with him. I freak out in a geeky acting way. They freak out in a starstruck way. He's Leonardo DiCaprio, and his fame is so big. That's a complete tangent about that.”

“If I had to spend equal time doing paintings, and equal time going to galleries and doing art business, and equal time making music, and equal time going to record companies, or to the publicist or to the lawyer, forget it. It would take four times as long to do all that stuff. Unless I had a patron. That's why Leonardo da Vinci was successful. He had the Medicis, right?”

“It is impossible to decide whether a particular detail of the Pythagorean universe was the work of the master, or filled in by a pupil a remark which equally applies to Leonardo or Michelangelo . But there can be no doubt that the basic features were conceived by a single mind; that Pythagoras of Samos was both the founder of a new religious philosophy, and the founder of Science, as the word is understood today.”

“On the other hand, heroism is basic to the character of the Nordic peoples. This heroism of the ancient mythic period and this is what is decisive has never been lost, despite times of decline, so long as the Nordic blood was still alive. Heroism, in fact, took many forms, from the warrior nobility of Siegfried or Hercules to the intellectual nobility of Copernicus and Leonardo , the religious nobility of Eckehart and Lagarde, or the political nobility of Frederick the Great and Bismarck , and its substance has remained the same.”

“The names of great painters are like passing-bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; .in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality.”

“Instead of the 1997 film directed, written, by James Cameron with Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane creating a love story and a large diamond with a beautiful song “My Heart Will Go On” sung by Celine Dion. What about the real love story that took place that night between the passengers themselves, and many crew members knowing they would also give their lives. Adding another meaning for “SOS” Service, Obedience, and Sacrifice.”

“There's a difference in our ages [with Leonardo DiCaprio], but we were both in the same sort of position [on The Quick and the Death movie].Everyone below us in a casting position were all these really famous character actors like Keith David. And they were looking at the two of us going, 'Who are these guys?' So that naturally kind of put us together in a way where we'd just hang out together because we didn't care about status. We just wanted to enjoy the experience. The two things that have changed about Leo [ DiCaprio] since that time: he can drink legally and he's no longer a virgin.”

“The philosophic mind inclines always to an elaborate life--the life of Goethe or of Leonardo da Vinci; but the life of the poet isintense--the life of Blake or of Dante--taking into its centre the life that surrounds it and flinging it abroad again amid planetary music.”

“Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.”

“Indeed, the great Leonardo (da Vinci) remained like a child for the whole of his life in more than one way. It is said that all great men are bound to retain some infantile part. Even as an adult he continued to play, and this was another reason why he often appeared uncanny and incomprehensible to his contemporaries.”

“FACT: The Priory of Sion - a European secret society founded in 1099 - is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliothque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression of all the passions, the animal forces, the Caliban gruntings and groanings which are left in human nature when the divine has been poured away. Leonardo was less concerned than his Gothic predecessors with the ethereal parts of our nature, and so his caricatures, in their expression of passionate energy, merge imperceptibly into the heroic.”

“Well, it was interesting because when I was going to do it the first time in my head was Leonardo DiCaprio [for Chris] and Marlon Brando was going to play the character that Hal Holbrook eventually played. But then when it wasn't to be and there was no promise that it ever would be I think some part of me didn't want to attach specifics to it anymore - actors or anything else - because I wanted to see it made that much more badly.”

“What made Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein such creative geniuses? It wasn't reading books or watching YouTube talks about How To Be More Creative, that's for sure... If startling insights could be systematically arrived at, they wouldn't be startling. The best you can do is to create a conducive environment: put in the hours; take time to daydream; avoid mind-corroding substances.”

“What if at school you had to take an 'art class' in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso? Would that make you appreciate art? Would you want to learn more about it? I doubt it..........but this is how math is taught and so in the eyes of most of us it becomes the equivalent of watching paint dry. While the paintings of the great masters are readily available, the math of the great masters is locked away.”

“Ever see a skinny guy on a cold day? You know they tremble like Chihuahuas. Then you see a fat guy in a tank top - nine degrees, he's sweatin'. Look at 'Titanic,' remember the boat goes into the icy cold waters? Little skinny Leonardo: dead. Final scene, Kathy Bates on a rowboat, coat open, eating a hotdog.”