As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing  machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.
Lautreamont, The Chants of Maldoror
 

Clockwise: André Breton, Luis Bunuel,  Paul Eluard, Yves Tanguy, René  Magritte, Salvadore Dali

SURREALISM, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing, or by other means, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, in the absence of all control exercised by the reason and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.
--André Breton in "What is Surrealism?"

Seated (left to right): Crevel, Enrst, Dostoyevsky, Fraenkel, Paulhan, Peret, Baargeld, Desnos
Standing: Soupault, Arp, Morise, Raphael, Paul Eluard, Aragon, Breton, de Chirico, Gala Eluard

“I believe the moment is at hand when, by a paranoiac and active advance of the mind, it will be possible . . . to systematize confusion and thus help to discredit completely the world of reality.”
“Salvador Dali, “The Stinking Ass”

“[Surrealism  is] a method by means of which we may accept the enigmas of existence and in daily living learn to transcend impotencies, contradictions, wars.”
Wallace Fowlie, The Age of Surrealism

“The vice called . . . surrealism is the immoderate and passionate use of the drug which is the image.”
Louis Aragon

“[The Surrealists] looked upon the unconscious as a marvelous, undiscovered world of human experience, a world in which human reason did not play the commanding role and in which it was therefore possible to look for the means of total liberation for the human spirit.”
Calvin Thompkins, The World of Marcel Duchamp

“The marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.”
André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism

“It seems clear that precise and charming evocations of mystery are furnished best by images of everyday objects combined or transformed in such a way that their agreement with our preconceived ideas, simple or sophisticated, is obliterated.”
René Magritte