A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
Interpretation
Art and thought help individuals escape cultural constraints and express themselves freely.
This quote by Beverly Sills emphasizes the vital role that art and critical thinking play in enabling individuals to break free from societal norms and expectations. By engaging with artistic expression and thoughtful contemplation, a person can attain a unique perspective that allows them to evaluate the world independently, fostering personal autonomy and creative judgment.
In practice
During an art exhibition, to emphasize the importance of personal expression through creativity.
I began by listening to my mother's collection of Amelita Galli-Curci and Lily Pons records, and then was taken (at age eight) to hear Pons at a Met performance of Lakme. It was at that moment that I decided to become an opera star. Not just an opera singer, but an opera star!
I was always the first person in the theater all the time. If it was an eight-o'clock curtain, I was here at five-thirty, and it wasn't that I needed to vocalize, because I was all warmed up. I couldn't wait for it to begin.
I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.
There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.
I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity. I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not - more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.
Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems
Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy.
Whenever I get an idea for a song, even before jotting down the notes, I can hear it in the orchestra, I can smell it in the scenery, I can see the kind of actor who will sing it, and I am aware of an audience listening to it.
I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing.
I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
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