Top 100 Martha Graham Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The only sin is mediocrity.”

— Martha Graham

Featured in: Dance Quotes

2. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.”

— Martha Graham

Featured in: Be Yourself Quotes, Individuality Quotes

3. “The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.”

— Martha Graham

Featured in: Dance Quotes

4. “Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.”

— Martha Graham

Featured in: Enjoy Life Quotes, Passion Quotes, You Are Enough Quotes, Dance Quotes

5. “Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.”

— Martha Graham

6. “Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.”

— Martha Graham

7. “Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”

— Martha Graham

8. “Discipline is liberation.”

— Martha Graham

9. “Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.”

— Martha Graham

10. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

— Martha Graham

11. “The body says what words cannot.”

— Martha Graham

12. “All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”

— Martha Graham

13. “I believe that we learn by practice.”

— Martha Graham

14. “No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

— Martha Graham

15. “We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.”

— Martha Graham

16. “Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.”

— Martha Graham

Featured in: Dance Quotes

17. “Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.”

— Martha Graham

18. “Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.”

— Martha Graham

19. “What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.”

— Martha Graham

20. “Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.”

— Martha Graham

21. “You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.”

— Martha Graham

22. “Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for – liberation.”

— Martha Graham

23. “Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.”

— Martha Graham

24. “The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.”

— Martha Graham

25. “We are all of us, unique – each a unique pattern of creativity and if we do not fulfill it, it is lost for all time.”

— Martha Graham

26. “Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.”

— Martha Graham

27. “In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing.”

— Martha Graham

28. “What makes a great dancer is not technique. What makes a great dancer is passion.”

— Martha Graham

29. “There is only one you in all time.”

— Martha Graham

30. “It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.”

— Martha Graham

31. “I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination.”

— Martha Graham

32. “The center of the stage is where I am.”

— Martha Graham

33. “People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life.”

— Martha Graham

34. “Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.”

— Martha Graham

35. “It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

— Martha Graham

36. “When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it’s the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography.”

— Martha Graham

37. “Stand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.”

— Martha Graham

38. “Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.”

— Martha Graham

39. “No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.”

— Martha Graham

40. “I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.”

— Martha Graham

41. “The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted.”

— Martha Graham

42. “The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.”

— Martha Graham

43. “The body is a sacred garment.”

— Martha Graham

44. “Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”

— Martha Graham

45. “If you feel depressed you shouldn’t go out on the street because it will show on your face and you’ll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.”

— Martha Graham

46. “There is fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep.”

— Martha Graham

47. “The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual – as we think so will we act.”

— Martha Graham

48. “The unique must be fulfilled.”

— Martha Graham

49. “My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.”

— Martha Graham

50. “I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.”

— Martha Graham