QuoteProject
I think there's a lot of similarity between what people try to do with religion with what they want from art. In fact, I very specifically think that they are same thing. Not that religion and art are the same, but that they both tap into the same need we have for surrender.
Brian Eno
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Both religion and art fulfill a deep human need for surrender and connection.

Brian Eno's quote suggests that both religion and art serve a fundamental purpose in human life—addressing a collective yearning for surrender and a deeper understanding of existence. He argues that while they are not identical, the psychological and emotional needs they fulfill are strikingly similar, indicating a profound link between spiritual and artistic experiences.

Themes

ArtReligionSurrenderHuman ExperienceConnection

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the emotional impact of art, this quote can highlight the deeper significance of artistic expression.

More from Brian Eno

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
Brian EnoRead
I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren't historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.
Brian EnoRead
When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.
Brian EnoRead
People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
Brian EnoRead
In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.
Brian EnoRead
Ambient music must be as ignorable as it is interesting.
Brian EnoRead

Similar quotes

Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we [Europeans] shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.
Jean BaudrillardRead
I've come to appreciate how special a song is compared to other art forms, because you can carry it around in your head and your heart, and it remains part of you. It just comes as natural as a bird to me, always did. It's the way singer-songwriters make sense of our lives.
Kris KristoffersonRead
A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows
Rene MagritteRead
I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon.
Truman CapoteRead
If I were a first rate writer, I wouldn't mind a bit. What does depress me is this: it is so desperately hard and so obsessive and so lonely to write that, in return for all this work, one would like a little self satisfaction. And that is never going to come, for the simple reason that I do not deserve it. I cannot be a good enough writer. You see? I call it grim. But the future looks awfully clear to me.
Martha GellhornRead
Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.
BanksyRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.