5 quotations, each verified against its source and credited to the work it comes from — the wording as Pablo Picasso wrote or said it, not as the internet passes it around.
How these quotes were checked
Pablo Picasso talked better than almost anyone, wrote almost nothing, and is quoted everywhere — which makes his cluster the easiest place for invented sentences to hide. A line enters this collection only when its wording has been checked against his printed statements: the 1923 interview with Marius de Zayas that he approved for The Arts, and the 1935 conversation Christian Zervos recorded for Cahiers d'Art.
The two most shared “Picasso” quotations have no documented source at all, and his single most famous saying is a compression of what the 1923 interview actually prints. All three are documented below.
A sentence linked to Hemingway may be exact, shortened, remembered by someone else, or unsupported. Each label below explains what the available evidence actually proves.
No Picasso text, interview, or recorded conversation contains this. Quote Investigator traces the idea through decades of variants about poets and composers — T. S. Eliot's 1920 “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal” is the famous real one — with the Picasso attribution appearing only decades later, most visibly after Steve Jobs quoted it as Picasso in 1996.
Attributed to Picasso in print only from the mid-1970s, after his death, with no interview or document behind it. Quote Investigator finds the trail begins with a 1976 book quoting him without citation; nothing in his recorded statements carries the sentence.
A full-text search across Picasso's collected statements and the standard documentary collections finds no trace of this sentence. It circulates on posters and quote sites without a citation to any interview or text.
The thought is genuinely his; the sentence is not. What the 1923 de Zayas interview prints is: “In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find, is the thing.” The four-word aphorism is a later compression — snappier, but not what he approved for publication.
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.
In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find, is the thing.
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something.
A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one's thoughts change.
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper…
No. Nothing in his recorded statements contains it, and attribution researchers trace the saying through earlier variants about poets — T. S. Eliot's 1920 “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal” is the documented ancestor. The Picasso attribution spread widely after Steve Jobs used it in a 1996 interview.
There is no evidence he did. The sentence first appears attributed to him in the mid-1970s, after his death, without citation, and none of his printed interviews or recorded conversations carries it.
From the interview he approved for The Arts in 1923: “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.” The same interview holds the real version of his seek-and-find saying: “In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find, is the thing.”
Not in those words. The 1923 de Zayas interview prints: “In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find, is the thing.” The four-word version is a later compression of that passage.
In the 1935 conversation recorded by Christian Zervos for Cahiers d'Art: “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something.” The same conversation gives his account of how a picture changes as one's thoughts change while it is being made.
The sources below are the editions, archives, and full-text searches used to verify the quotations on this page. Every line was checked against one or more of them before it appeared here.
Published analysis and historical context used in preparing the Pablo Picasso page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Pablo Picasso page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Pablo Picasso page.
Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Pablo Picasso page.
Verification is the point of this collection: a quotation is listed only when its wording has been checked against the sources above, and the attribution notes record what each check found about the famous lines that failed.
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