Richard Edelman Quotes

I soon discovered, after I became chairman of the NEH, that, for a number of academics, the truth was not merely irrelevant - it no longer existed.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

The best theater is trying to tell the truth, and the best politics is trying to tell the truth.

There is a desperate tendency to try to legislate artists, to try to lay down rules for their obligations to society. Just leave artists alone. If you are a true artist, you will have a very finely tuned moral mechanism.

Art is not a democracy, in fact art is the enemy of democracy

What counts most is finding new ways to get the world down in paint on my own terms.

I really like individualism based on truth.

It would be nice to think that a censor could allow a genuine work of artistic seriousness and ban a titillating piece of sadism, but it would take a miracle to make such a distinction stick.

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

As an artist, you have the job of working out whatever is given you to work out.

I always want to encourage young artists. As the budgets get smaller, that might provide an opening for younger artists and more experimentation. Budgets had gotten quite large for art, as they had for architecture. I'm not going to cut back. The minute someone walks through my door, I go, "That's my thing and you got to let me do it."

To avoid being drawn into error, keep a firm grip on the truth.

I'm like a movie director, so wherever I feel that I need to go over this type of beat, that's what I'm going to do, that's where I'm going to go.

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.

It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artist. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need

What I've always said was, hang in there, let me write what I want to write, and you'll probably like it.

To contest an author's right to create a poetic or realistic work is to want to force him to change his temperament, challenge his originality, refuse to allow him to use the eye and the intelligence nature has given him.

All I would ask you to be thinking of is the truth and not Socrates.

Truth cannot be sacrificed at the altar of pretended tolerance. Real tolerance is deference to all ideas, not indifference to the truth.

Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried and dared... Photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it was achieved.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

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.

The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand participation in their vision.

Try to produce your own films, avoid directing for hire.

The key to attempting to create art in some aspect is also knowing that it will turn some people off.