Tristan Tzara Quotes

Dada is not modern at all, it is rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada puts an artificial sweetness onto things, a snow of butterflies coming out of a conjurer’s skull. Dada is stillness and does not understand the passions.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.

I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles.

But let’s speak of art for a moment. Yes, art. I know a gentleman who makes excellent portraits. This gentleman is a camera.

Let us try for once not to be right.

Thought is made in the mouth.

You’ll never know why you exist, but you’ll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.

To make a poem, take one newspaper, one pair of scissors, snip the words one by one and put them in a bag. Shake gently, draw them out at random, and copy them conscientiously… DADA est mort. DADA est idiot. Vive DADA!

Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.

We have always made mistakes, but the greatest mistakes are the poems we have written.

Everyone dances to his own personal boomboom.

The summit sings what is being spoken in the depths.

The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism.

I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way.” – Tristan Tzara “Dada Manifesto 1918