Suspicions that the mind, of itself, gathers, are but buzzes; but suspicions that are artificially nourished and put into mens heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings. – Francis Bacon
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them. – Francis Bacon
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. – Francis Bacon
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