I can paint pictures, but I cannot rule men.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that artistic skill does not equate to leadership or authority over others.
Fra Angelico suggests that while he possesses the ability to create beautiful art, he recognizes his limitations in governing or controlling people. This quote highlights the distinction between creative talent and the complex dynamics of leadership, emphasizing that mastery in one domain does not automatically confer skill in another.
In practice
During a gallery opening, one might say this quote to highlight the distinction between artists and leaders.
Architecture to me is whole. I cannot say I only care about this 25% and the other 75% I let go... it's just I want to work the way I want to work. In my shop, you can order certain things and other things you cannot. They are not available.
To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to transform prose into poetry.
I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.
If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.
If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay - in solid cash - the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
I want to be able to follow the example of those extraordinary British actresses who move effortlessly from film to TV to theatre roles.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.