I can imagine no society which does not embody some method of arbitration. – Herbert Read
It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved. – Herbert Read
It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one. – Herbert Read
What I do deny is that you can build any enduring society without some such mystical ethos. – Herbert Read
The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai. – J. G. Ballard