Wilson Cruz Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

Art is activism.

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

No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.

My theater has always been a political battle on the stage.

People like Dick Gregory, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and Nina Simone show me what the definition of an artist is - it isn't just to make art but to speak truth to what's happening, speak beauty into the world, speak love into the world and also... get involved.

People are not going to change because an activist goes around shouting.

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

Activism in the street is truth-telling, and organizing is talking to people for a specific goal.

We live in the age of communication. Write letters to the editor. Speak to your congressman, to your senator. If you are young, especially young people are taken by this human rights activities. They should organize the universities.

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

Use your art to fight.

Action comes from keeping the heat on. No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.

I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time.

Any protester knows that the only way activism works is to get the people on your side.

I was raised in a very activist household so that I grew up surrounded by people who were activists.

I was an activist long before I even entertained the possibility of being an actor.

Art is about the edges and the sharp corners and those places are not conducive to activism, which is about putting on a gloss.

As a young man, causes of one kind or another engaged me, and I thought the media is where you express yourself in that. I lived with the illusion, for quite a long time, that if you described something accurately, something would be done about it.

I've never been involved in any kind of political movement.

I hadn't planned on being an activist.

Activism, to me, I don't know if it really works. It may work for somebody else, but it does not work for me.