Best 57 quotes of Rudolf Arnheim on MyQuotes

When a system is considered in two different states, the difference in volume or in any other property, between the two states, depends solely upon those states themselves and not upon the manner in which the system may pass from one state to the other.

When the thing observed... is seen as an agglomeration of pieces, the details lose their meaning and the whole becomes unrecognizable. This is often true of snapshots in which no pattern of salient shapes organizes the mass of vague and complex nuances.

Would there be any truth in saying that psychology was created by the sophists to sow distrust between man and his world?

Every great artist gives birth to a new universe, in which the familiar things look the way they have never before looked to anyone.

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.

Our experiences and ideas tend to be common but not deep, or deep but not common.

What is so 'only' about 'yourself'? Is not the first thing one has to learn in this respect that to do something for yourself--I mean, the right kind of thing--is just as valuable and ethical than to do it for somebody else? Wouldn't you say that the good feeling we get simply because we did 'it' (whatever) for somebody else is cheating, in that it postpones the question: what is it good for?