Robert Christgau Quotes

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.

I think there is a debate in the arts about, you know, whether we must strive for art for art's sake, and you know, kind of try to keep political debate out of our work. And to that I say, I'd like you to show me an example of, you know, this so-called apolitical art. I don't think there's any such thing.

I'm not proud of the lyrics to 'Shake It Up.'

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

I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.

If art is singular expression, then by nature, the best art is controversial. But when art stirs debate for reasons besides its artistic integrity, that's when things get bent.

So at a time in which the media give the public everything it wants and desires, maybe art should adopt a much more aggressive attitude towards the public. I myself am very much inclined to take this position.

My theory is this; I'm not a political songwriter. I'm an honest songwriter.

Any cartoon that can be liked by a committee is really not worth drawing; in fact, must not be drawn at all! Better to become a stockbroker.

People underestimate the hip-hop audience and the capacity to understand politics when it's part of music.

Speaking out against rap music is useless, and it's futile. The reality is there's criticism for everything, but Jay-Z is one of the most remarkable artists of our time of any genre, and as a hip-hop artist he carries the weight of that art form with such splendor and grace and genius.

I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.

You can't come out on a record dissing the system and be on a label that's connected to the system.

I know some very political people who rap, and they say very political things and they'll never get a deal.

When theater becomes a soothing middle-class thing, when it's packaged as the Night Out, then that's the death of it.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

All literatures can have political uses and misuses. Sometimes politics can enhance, sometimes it can get in the way of imaginative literature...

Art is art. Politics is politics. It's very hard to get them together.

I will not have the Federal Theater used politically.

Art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

A bunch of comedians have gotten in 'trouble' for sharing their views. When an actor or an artist or might come out saying something political or whatever, then it becomes about that view.

Art is not boosterism, it's not propaganda, and it's not spin, but that's not something that art does, and nor has it historically ever done it.

Painting was a problem - you produce a thing, and then you sell it and get money, and that was quickly considered totally uncool.

I do not write political shows; I should not write political shows.

If you are a writer from Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, you don't have the luxury of being apolitical. You can't say, 'That's politics. I'm just doing my work.'