«We may like that the meaning of the word “art” is an attempt to make people aware of their own greatness that they ignore.»André Malraux, Foreword to Days of Wrath (1935),
in Complete Works, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, t. I, p. 776.

«However much related it may be to the civilization it emerges from, art often exceeds it – and maybe even transcends it… – as if it could use powers it wasn’t aware of, or else an inaccessible wholeness of man.»André Malraux, The Voices of Silence (1951),
in Writings on Art I, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, p. 880.

«Each of the masterpieces is a purification of the world, but their common message is that of their existence and the victory of each individual artist over his servitude. All art is a revolt against man’s fate.Art is an anti-fate.»André Malraux, The Voices of Silence (1951),
in Writings on Art I, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, p. 897.

«Beyond the darkness bristled by the claws of insects of the demonic world, the Saturnine strength of the shapeless; beyond the Imaginary Museum and the immense procession of shadows of lost works, the teaching strength that the works reveal and which exceeds them, the strength marking everything which is called human in this world.»André Malraux, The Statuary (1952),
in Writings on Art I, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, p. 1029

«It is merely an action over which neither the carelessness of constellations, nor the eternal whispering of the rivers prevails: this is the action by which man snatches something from death.»André Malraux, Speech for Saving the monuments of the Higher Egypt (1960),
in Complete Works, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, t. III, p. 929

«To a viewer indifferent to sculpture, a Gudéa head is as much a good one as it resembles more a living person’s head; it is all the more present for the artist as it belongs to a different world, a world where it meets the heads of Chartres and Angkor, those of Benin and those of the Acropolis.»André Malraux, The Intemporal (1976),
in Writings on Art II, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, p. 784.

“The world must have a meaning, for this meaning to assume anguish, Evil, even as mystery. (Yet is sacrifice itself less of a mystery than Evil?)”André Malraux, Precarious Man and Literature (1977), in Essays,
Complete Works, Bibl. de la Pléiade, Gallimard, volume VI, p. 923.

“Death is an invincible mystery; life is a strange mystery.”André Malraux, Precarious Man and Literature (1977), in Essays,
Complete Works, Bibl. de la Pléiade, Gallimard, volume VI, p. 923.