Quotes from Gutzon Borglum

There is something in sheer volume that awes and terrifies, lifts us out of ourselves.

Forget about getting a bank balance and don't be satisfied with things being good enough. Accept only that which is good or the best.

Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor. Civilizations are ghouls.

Beauty is like a soul that hovers over the surface of form. Its presence is unmistakable in art or in life.

Washington and Lincoln mean as much to us as any two men could mean to a civilization, a people, and age, but I told Mr. Coolidge when he dedicated this monument that this rock is being carved with a monument that will outlive our government.

I was born in the Golden West, reared in the arms of the Church, deluged with saints to draw from, and suckled on Italian art: my slates were covered from end to end with portraits of Savonarola, Fra Angelico, and Wild Bill and Sitting Bull; I knew all equally well and admired them about alike.

Out of the west came Lincoln, and all that he had he gave to the preservation of the Union that had been bought so dearly and was falling to pieces.

Art does not exist for itself; it is but an avenue through and by which humanity expresses itself.

I believe and find in my study of art that the real artist is nine-tenths of the time a craftsman, and it is only in that small one-tenth of the time that he rises to the elevated position of a prophet and a master.

There is art in everything - industry, education, play, all are forms of art.

Democracy has betrayed the race, because education has not served man as was expected.

I am ready to rot in jail that art may live.

I am ready to rot in jail for the rest of my life rather than admit that my small-minded enemies are right.

Nebraska people have the heart and power to create real beauty and art if they will only wake up and do it.

I have labored to make the record of the great men of my time.

A piece of sculpture has to be more than a block of wood.

A city of homes should not be built as a business center.

Renaissance always comes out of depression.

No man can ever repay the brooding mother love to which he his life.

Women have always been the world's burden bearers. Ever since history began the great burden of the world's faith, its belief in immortality has been carried in the arms of its women.

Ten thousand years from now our civilization will have passed without leaving a trace. A new race of people will inhabit the earth. They will come to Mount Rushmore and read the record we have made.

Motherhood is heroism. It is God-given, and yet men treat women as though of similar common clay, when in fact they are but lower than the angels.

Genius knocks on the door and gets no answer but its own echo.

Art in America should be American, drawn from American sources, memorializing American achievement.