Salvador Dali

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am hallucinogenic.

Let my enemies devour each other.

There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Don't bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

I have Dalinian thought: the one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

We must always remember that the Chinese revolution was not a peasant's revolution, but one of the extreme Right.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

I don't do drugs. I am drugs.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.