David Rockefeller

The Japanese banks are not having an easy time as they once had.

I suspect that many corporations have begun to understand that they have an important role to play in the lives of their communities, and that allocating funds to support local groups helps them discharge that function and also burnish their image.

Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.

I owe much to mother. She had an expert’s understanding, but also approached art emotionally.

If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress.

When you have a lot of resources, the most important thing is to have had good parents and to have been brought up by people who gave one the proper values.

In the field of art, to be able to have lunch with Kirk Varnedoe is thrilling. I met him at Si and Victoria Newhouse’s dinner one night. Barnett Newman’s widow was there. That’s the part of me that’s a fan. Like when I was a kid and went to the Brooklyn Paramount. Well, my interest has expanded, and it’s not just rock-and-roll.

Playing with freedom can only come after a certain amount of foundational study.

I’m terribly intuitive-I always thought I was intellectual about what I do, but I’ve come to the realization that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing half the time.

Bad artists imitate, great artists steal.

If you hold onto the beauty and inspiration and the clarity that is music, you will have an anchor, you will not be too far swayed by what the world is.

To this day I’m really not sure if I was playing Ziggy [Stardust] or if Ziggy was exaggerated aspects of my own personality. A fair amount of psychological baggage was undoubtedly coming out through the character. Because I felt awkward and nervous and inadequate with myself, it felt easier to be somebody else.

I’ve always felt that a lot of modern art is a con, and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists.

People with talent are not interested in showing off behind another person.

I wouldn’t give five cents for all the art in the world.

There is nothing new… everything has roots in the past.

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

Creative Arts raise a person to another level of consciousness as if you could imagine life before words.

All art inspires me. Life inspires me. The art of life, thus my own art.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.