Artist Activist Quotes

#1. President Obama appears to me to have elevated and implemented the artist-activist concept to the role of empowered servant-leader ...

Aberjhani

#2. I love biographies. I read Patti Smith's 'Just Kids.' I'm into that time frame in New York, the '70s and '80s. In art school, I read 'Close to the Knives,' the autobiography of the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz.

Barry McGee

#3. I find myself walking these lines. Like I might be an artist, but I also might be an activist. And I'm trying to be both in a way that honors both and doesn't stray too far into either.

Chris Jordan

#4. I'm an artist, I'm not an activist.

Shirin Neshat

#5. Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has been on the bad side of the Chinese government for years.

Terry Teachout

#6. I am in the lineage of Gil Scott-Heron, great activist-type artists. But I'm also in the lineage of a Miles Davis - you know, that liked nice things also.

Kanye West

#7. People are always wondering if I am an artist or political activist or politician. Maybe I'll just clearly tell you: Whatever I do is not art. Let's say it is just objects or materials, movies or writing, but not art, OK?

Ai Weiwei

#8. I think being an activist and an artist is an interesting contradiction, because so often they are at odds with one another. When you write as an artist you have to clean the palate of your own politics in creating characters and activism is kind of the exact opposite.

Eve Ensler

#9. Being an activist and an artist - those two things should go together. You should allow the artistic sensibility to control some of your activism, but never should it be allowed to paralyze you.

Bill Ayers

#10. I feel like being an artist and being an activist are separate things; I know some people who feel very differently.

Oscar Isaac