William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne Quotes

… perhaps we are awakening to the realization that if individuals can no longer patronize the arts in the way they did in the old days, we may come to a time where the public will undertake to do this for its own pleasure and profit.

As President, I will end once and for all the use of taxpayer funds to promote the National Endowment for the Arts and other programs that subsidize amoral and degrading activities.

I know that the arts are important. I'm not denying that, but I can't associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

Less money for public media means less access to the arts.

For many years, the government of Canada has massively supported orchestras and the arts in general.

Without a good cultural policy, without adequate help, we will always have individualists, shooting stars who are rapidly forgotten or who stop painting for a more profitable occupation.

As long as Federal dollars are used to finance art projects, Congress will have the responsibility to its constituents to determine what type of art taxpayer dollars will support.

I hate all poets and painters.

If an artist is going to take money from the taxpayers I guess he's got to be prepared to have the taxpayers dissatisfied with the product.

The arts are part of the fiber of American society and should get Federal support.

I have written favourably in support of subsidy for the arts since the 1960s, and I continue to believe absolutely in subsidy, as I do in the BBC licence fee.

It is not true that I oppose government funding of the arts.

I paint. I love the visual arts.

Senator Helms might very well do that. I would point out to him that we in the art world are not necessarily in the business of making controversial art.

Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.

I was always interested in the arts as a child - drawing, painting, and piano - but acting became a favourite. I was a major theatre geek in high school - if I wasn't in the drama room at lunch rehearsing, I'd be in the art room finishing up some type of project.

San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind.

I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes.

My reputation was built on hostility. I had no friends and some very virulent enemies in the old-guard art scene when I began. They threw their heavy artillery against me. They were convinced I was perverting the public taste.

I want to give my compliments to Australia. Ever since your government paid a few million dollars for a Jackson Pollack painting, I figure that it must be a marvellous country.

Mr. Chairman, obviously a $60 million cut in the National Endowment for the Arts would be a disaster.

I've always been a creative person, and I'd always wanted to paint, so I went to art school and began painting and sculpting.

I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it.

I would have loved to have been a painter or a sculptor. I'm still fascinated by those things.

We are not very good out keeping out things with subsidies.