Gutzon Borglum

“You have here In New York one of the greatest and most picturesque and artistic structures in the world. I mean the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“For many years I had been aware that women were not only most important creations in the universe, but the nearest approach that man could reach to the divine.”

“Man's soul is strengthened by suffering.”

“Renaissance always comes out of depression.”

“Mount Rushmore is eternal. It will stand until the end of time.”

“If you are an artist, you may live with Lincoln. You sit with him, your coat is spread to keep the snow from the grave of Ann Rutledge; you will walk with Washington through the snow and suffer with him as you note the bloodstained footsteps at Valley Forge.”

“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.”

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

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

“Stone Mountain Memorial is the greatest project of its sort ever conceived. It should be finished, because it represent an idea as deep, as basic as the rocks on which our wonderful continent rests.”

“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.”

“That is how America gets her art: Contracting firms get the contract and the honor. Starving artists do the work. The government pays for sculpturing thousands of dollars, of which the sculptor gets a hundred or so.”

“The aim of art is to understand and establish order, which is another form of beauty.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Art is not what most people think it to be. It is not an occupation of one-railed people.”

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

“America has no monuments to ideas; her monuments are erected to individuals.”

“You may go from the Battery to Harlem, and in our monuments and statues of public men you will see the slavish adherence to Greek and Roman ideals, from which our artists cannot get away.”

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