Nicolas Darvas quotes

  • We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.

  • Our history is not our destiny.

  • Oh, blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, That each may fill the circle mark'd by heaven.

  • Often we want people to pray for us and help us, but we always defeat our object when we look too much to them and lean upon them. The true secret of union is for both to look upon God, and in the act of looking past themselves to Him they are unconsciously united.

  • Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.

  • It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.

  • How aware were photographers in the past of other visual arts? "No photographer of any distinction at all could approach his work without some awareness of what was going on in other visual media, and for that matter neither the painter nor the draughtsman could ignore photography."

  • You can't have too much of everything, you must have a balance, that's very important.

  • There has to be a balance between your mental satisfaction and the financial needs of your company. (But) I always remember that it's the fantasy, the artistic side, that makes customers want to buy the straightforward black pants.

  • Human compassion is equal to human cruelty, and it is up to each of us to tip the balance.