Mao Zedong Quotes

Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.

In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics.

Picasso is a communist. Neither am I.

I am an artist and a political being as well.

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.

The best art is either political or revolutionary....Those things that are powerfully revolutionary are not always successful in the market place.

All political art is bad – all good art is political.

All good art should be political, I think, and inevitably it all becomes political really, in one way or another.

Political art never goes away. I started watching The West Wing show recently and I'm actually learning about how the government works in a way. It's kind of embarrassing.

Think of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I don't see those separations too much, between what is artistic and what is political. Maybe in painting... no, I don't even believe that.

I'm a sort of political person, and I feel that there's a kind of ineradicably political dimension to theater, to all theater, whether it's overtly political or not.

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

So begins a question which has of late become more and more urgent: what is the relation of aesthetics to politics?

At the same time, of course, Marxism arose - Rosa Luxembourg, Leninism, anarchism - and art became political.

I met my wife Anne who was a sociology student, and her influence together with activities associated with the student movement of the time opened up my interests amongst other things into the theatre, art, music, politics and philosophy.

I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it.

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

I am a Communist. My painting is Communist painting.

Art is not something to decorate a wall. Art is a political weapon.

If you look at the history of art and fashion, it's always been political. It's always been pushing boundaries.

Art is inherently political. Even trying to make a film that has nothing to do with politics is, in and of itself, a political act.

Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy.

I like to make broader strokes with politics in my work.

Music that speaks of politics is less listened to than the music of partying, but it's still there.

We've never been as active politically as we have been as artists. But politics always brush up against the arts, oh, about every four years in this country.