Thom Mayne Quotes

A lot of artists say, I'm not political. People are afraid of this word.

I passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life.

Politics is about the participation and engagement of the wider citizenry - to miss that point would doom us to irrelevance.

I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world, and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits.

I took a political stance early on, but I don't think my work is overtly political. I respond to events.

The democratic process is only as great as the people who participate in it.

The public needs art - and it is the responsibility of a 'self-proclaimed artist' to realize that the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for a few and ignore the masses.

I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement.

At the end of the day, I'm an artist. I may make work and decide to do something political, but it will come out of an artist's position. It won't come out of society telling me I have to. If I do, it's because I choose, as an artist, to do 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.

Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen.

Art and politics must move closer together. Reflection and action must be equally valid in good men if history is not to take one course and art another.

Wherever I go, I get a sense of longing for community and the desire on the part of grassroots citizens to be part of something bigger and far nobler than themselves. This attitude is particularly evident among the young, many of whom feel deprived of a great cause in which to enlist. .

The artist can be above political parties, he can belong in a political party, he can act in politics.

Whatever your political leaning, vote. This participation is vital. I feel the same way about issues like the space program, education, the military. The more the public focuses on these things, thinks and forms opinions, I think the better we are as a democracy.

I love being in the BJP, communicating with people and doing something for them. It's very challenging.

Everyone wants me to be this political person... I'm not Malcolm X.

I often say that I inherited the family's recessive gene for adult-onset political activism.

It's amazing how, in New York, there is almost a feeling of entitlement by the public - this very palpable lack of surprise at being stopped in the street and being asked to be the subject of a 12-foot monumental painting.

I think it was interesting to be steeped in that [political] world.

That's what I'm about -- getting engaged. Too many people don't wade in the mud with the politicians.

We are involved in an intense battle. It is a battle between right and wrong, between truth and error, between the design of the Almighty on the one hand and that of Lucifer on the other. For that reason, we desperately need moral men and women who stand on principle, to be involved in the political process. Otherwise, we abdicate power to those whose designs are almost entirely selfish.

It may not be what you would've chosen, but we all have a responsibility to be active citizens and shape our system and our future.

No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

I hope always to earn my living by my art without having ever deviated by even a hair's breadth from my principles... to please anyone or to sell more easily.