The fingers must be educated, the thumb is born knowing.
Meaning of the quote
The quote suggests that while your fingers need to be trained and developed to do certain tasks, your thumb already knows how to do many things naturally. In other words, some skills come more easily to us than others, and we have to work hard to get better at the ones that don't come as naturally.
More quotes from Marc Chagall
Great art picks up where nature ends.
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The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.
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Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.
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When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art.
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I adore the theater and I am a painter. I think the two are made for a marriage of love. I will give all my soul to prove this once more.
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If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.
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All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.
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The fingers must be educated, the thumb is born knowing.
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In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
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I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.
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Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.
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