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Nell Irvin Painter Quotes

What we can see depends heavily on what our culture has trained us to look for.

What we can see depends heavily on what our culture has trained us to look for.

Nell Irvin Painter
Culture, Looks, Depends
Nell Irvin Painter (2011). “The History of White People”, p.16, W. W. Norton & Company

We live in a world in which it's harder to talk about the American in the singular, so we're a multi. We have several different people who represent the United States, so in that sense whiteness, the salience, the importance of whiteness is kind of tamping down some.

Nell Irvin Painter
People, United States, Different
Source: bigthink.com

Science is a truth that is true no matter what, no matter when and for all time and science as the kind of gospel truth replaces the gospel, which was religion.

Nell Irvin Painter
Matter, Kind, No Matter What
Source: bigthink.com

In places like Germany or France the idea of black-white is not so much black-white but "our people and them," and "them" can be people from the near east like Turks or Muslims or North Africans, all of whom might well be considered white in the United States.

Nell Irvin Painter
Ideas, White, People
Source: bigthink.com

I'm a professional historian. I do my research. I have a PhD. What does my race have to do with it?

Nell Irvin Painter
Race, Doe, Research
Source: bigthink.com

The American sense of the importance, the fundamental importance of the black-white dichotomy, comes out of societies founded in the era of the African slave trade, so societies like ours, that is to say the western hemisphere, the Caribbean and so forth, we share a lot in common.

Nell Irvin Painter
White, Black, Hemisphere
Source: bigthink.com

Making art for me is not fun in the sense of la, la, la, la, but it's something that I find very absorbing and very satisfying.

Nell Irvin Painter
Art, Fun, Satisfying
Source: bigthink.com

Grigsby's marvelous exploration-a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truth's use of technology-features more of her photographs than have ever been collected before. Among its many insights, I especially relished the analysis of Truth's illiteracy. Enduring Truths is art history with a wide-ranging concept of history left in. A terrific book, and one we've needed for a long time.

Nell Irvin Painter
Beautiful, Art, Book

Emerson was not passionate about abolition. He wasn't a passionate person. He was a cool intellectual, and I think he probably was a little uncomfortable with passionate people, but he was against slavery.

Nell Irvin Painter
Thinking, People, Intellectual
Source: bigthink.com

Before science, before the eighteenth century, religion answered the questions, and so in the nineteenth century for instance there was a real jostling between science and religion over the truth and this is why Darwin was so controversial.

Nell Irvin Painter
Real, Controversial, Century
Source: bigthink.com

Being a graduate student is no fun and is hard, but I'm sticking with it. I love making art.

Nell Irvin Painter
Art, Fun, Students
Source: bigthink.com

You need to do some work even if you have the talent. So I just went the way that was easier, the way I knew what to do, but I have always had the pleasure of the eye. I've always enjoyed color. I'm a knitter.

Nell Irvin Painter
Eye, Color, Needs
Source: bigthink.com

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