Ernst Gombrich

There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.

— Ernst Gombrich

Like art, science is born of itself, not of nature. There is no neutral naturalism. The artist, no less than the writer, needs a vocabulary before he can embark on a 'copy' of reality.

— Ernst Gombrich

Images apparently occupy a curious position somewhere between the statements of language, which are intended to convey a meaning, and the things of nature, to which we only can give a meaning.

— Ernst Gombrich

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.

— Ernst Gombrich

The true miracle of the language of art is not that it enables the artist to create the illusion of reality. It is that under the hands of a great master the image becomes translucent. In teaching us to see the visible world afresh, he gives us the illusion of looking into the invisible realms of the mind - if only we know, as Philostratus says, how to use our eyes.

— Ernst Gombrich

In my own field, the History of Art, it was Alois Riegl who, at the turn of the century, worked out his own translation of the Hegelian system into psychological terms.

— Ernst Gombrich

One never finishes learning about art. There are always new things to discover. Great works of art seem to look different every time one stands before them. They seem to be as inexhaustible and unpredictable as real human beings.

— Ernst Gombrich

If you want to do anything new you must first make sure you know what people have tried before.

— Ernst Gombrich

Even though I came from a Jewish home myself, it never entered my head that such horrors might be repeated in my own lifetime.

— Ernst Gombrich