Angie Thomas Quotes

I see so many activists... who are artists because they feel that they have the power of communication.

All good art should be political, I think, and inevitably it all becomes political really, in one way or another.

My acting and activism go hand-in-hand, and they really support one another.

I don't believe that there is a separation between art and political consciousness.

I consider myself an 'actorvist.' When I say that, what I mean is that I use my art to inform my activism and to be my activism sometimes, but I also use my activism in my art.

Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don't have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory.

I'm a sort of political person, and I feel that there's a kind of ineradicably political dimension to theater, to all theater, whether it's overtly political or not.

Some of the greatest artists did their best work when they got political.

Political art - not always a contradiction in terms - can destroy institutions, or eat away at them.

Art is not something to decorate a wall. Art is a political weapon.

My activism always existed. My art gave me the platform to do something about the activism.

I think that there are artists of different genres whose calling is to use their art to hope to affect and better the human condition - whether it's System of a Down, or Rage Against the Machine, or Public Enemy, or the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, or Pete Seeger. It's a group that I'm proud to be counted among.

If my work is on the stage, you can be rested assured I'm going to make use of it as a platform for activism as much as possible.

Activism and art do go hand in hand, but I am an artist and an 'artivist' within that.

The interesting artists I know are the ones doing political work. The most interesting people I know are the people who care about politics.

I think if you're going to make political art, you have to engage at some level. You can't just write about politics, you have to try and be politics as well.

Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor. And perhaps they should understand the role of a community organizer is to help people in distress.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don't do that, we really deserve the world we get.

I think there's a huge lack of political artists in America, and I think it really speaks to our consumeristic culture and how people are driven to be financially successful here. It's such a shame that we don't have people who are more inspired than that.

Artists look at the environment, and the best artists correctly diagnose the problem. I'm not saying artists can't be leaders, but that's not the job of art, to lead. Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte - there are artists all through history who have become leaders, but that was already in them, nothing to do with their art.

I am an artist and a political being as well.

It is difficult to make political art work.

Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.

If you have the opportunity for your art to meet activism, you shouldn't pass that up when it comes your way.

I was 100 percent political in the '80s - the first time around, let's call it, my first life as an artist.