Richard P Feynman - Friedrich Nietzsche - Rudolf Arnheim - Robert Evans - Alfred North Whitehead - Steve Jobs - J G Ballard - Stephen Smith TV - Ferdinand Porsche - Thomas J Watson -
I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, ‘Look how beautiful it is,’ and I’ll agree. Then he says, ‘I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,’ and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimetre; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colours in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the colour. It adds a question, Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts. Richard P Feynman
Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naiveté rests all aesthetics; it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined. Friedrich Nietzsche
At one of the annual conventions of the American society for Aesthetics much confusion arose when the Society for Anaesthetics met at the same time at the same hotel. Rudolf Arnheim
Buildings designed with careful attention to aesthetics arouse and enliven their occupants and that promotes their good health. Robert Evans
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues, 1954
For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through. Steve Jobs
I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic. A Buick radiator grille is as much a political statement as a Rolls Royce radiator grille, one enshrining a machine aesthetic driven by a populist optimism, the other enshrining a hierarchical and exclusive social order. J G Ballard
I don’t think it’s possible to touch people’s imagination today by aesthetic means. J G Ballard
A new cult of beauty was born ... The Aesthetic Movement. Stephen Smith, Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau II, BBC 2012
Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained. Ferdinand Porsche
Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all ... good design must primarily serve people. Thomas J Watson