James Joyce Quotes

Art isn't about following the rules. It's about breaking them.

I'm all about freedom in art. I'm from Texas, so when someone tells you which way to ride your horse, you think 'I'll just go to a different ranch. You guys are riding it backwards anyway.

The whole 'bad girl' thing allows me to mess up sometimes. And I have freedom to say more of what I want to.

Enlightenment values of individual freedom are manifested best in individual acts of criticism and defiance.

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

With the right of free speech goes the right of free silence.

The freedom of punk really appealed to me because I came from the rules and regulations of studying classical piano.

Art is freedom. If you defend art, you defend freedom.

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.

I'm not an old-fashioned, booze-and-drugs rock 'n' roller. For me, rock 'n' roll is all about doing whatever you want. It's about defying convention and being who you are. I'd rather go swimming or running or kite flying.

Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.

Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from his neighbor, the right to pick and choose the political philosophy he likes best, the right to associate with whomever he chooses, the right to join groups he prefers.

I’m not going to start churning out what you expect. If you want me to be a manufactured act, you can f*** off.

Every individual should be expressing themselves, whether a politician or a minister or a policeman.

I want to be able to speak freely about what I believe. There's a lot of people who would actually like to be able to do that but, for whatever reason, they can't.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.

I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.

The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.

You have to remember the police used to raid and arrest the audience for seeing Scorpio Rising (1964), or Jack Smith movies. Wouldn't that be exciting today, if you see went to the movie and everyone at the IFC was arrested in a paddy wagon and taken away?

What is a woman? I assure you, I do not know ... I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.

I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don't like it, you can paint over it!

I hope I will always have the ability to create art and live in a world where I can speak freely, and I can inspire people. I don't know what form that will take.

If a life could have a theme song - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is a religion, an obsession, a mania or all of these expressed in one word - individualism. I was born with that obsession, and I've never seen and do not know now a cause more worthy, more misunderstood, more seemingly hopeless and tragically needed.

Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.