Shepard Fairey Quotes

You should live hoping you are going to offend people, because then you're doing something.

Art is where we make a stand. If we don't make it there, freedom of expression is lost for everyone - for artists, for journalists, and for everyday people.

Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.

To think about love and passion and political correctness all together, it doesn't work. Art has to go way past the political to be effective.

In civic life, I think that's where you can debate what is good taste and what is acceptable to other people, and what's gonna offend people. Do that there, but leave it out of art, because art is the one frontier that shouldn't have restraints put on it.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

My lyrics aren't offensive. Some people find everything offensive.

I'm an artist; I love everyone.

LA can be a very open and accepting creative environment. But it is important, because there is this odd separation here, it is important to make your kids mindful of other people and other people's plight.

I don't particularly dislike any kind of person that might be reading my stuff. They like it and that's cool, but I don't do the work for any kind of group in particular, except for hobos, who just plain kick ass and light up my life.

I really care about people, and I would need someone to also genuinely value other human beings and want to be connected with people in the world and to know about other cultures. That might not be a high standard for someone else, but for me, it's really important to try and stick to that.

The value of tolerance is central to living in today's world - especially in diverse places like the Bronx.

I have not intended to denigrate or hurt the beliefs of anyone through my art.

Look. Art knows no prejudice, art knows no boundaries, art doesn't really have judgement in it's purest form. So just go, just go.

Regarding race or gender or sexuality, one of the great things about art and music is that they can provide people with very little else in common with a similar entry point for discussion, but the discussions still need to happen for life to get more interesting.

Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.

I am not brave enough to not pay my income tax and risk going to jail. But I can say rather freely what I want to say with my art.

Honestly, I expected to get a cold reception because of my subject matter. But when editors took a look at the story I had to tell, and saw that this was not a parochial story at all, they really warmed to it.

To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.

Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.

Certainly tolerance and acceptance were at the forefront of my music.

Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go.

Music is art to me, and you don't censor art. You don't go into a museum and censor things.

I don't believe in creating exclusionary art.

My impulse is to create an aesthetic that's about a humanistic approach to a world and trying to create compassion for all the characters.