Ben Shahn Quotes

I became an artist because of the possibility it gave me to develop in another way, because I didn't want to follow the same lines the others around me did. I was educated in the former German Democratic Republic, which meant that an individual figure had to be... like a soldier in the army.

Well, I try my best to be just like I am, But everybody wants you to be just like them, They sing while you slave and I just get bored

To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist.

Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" but when you're an adult and to be different is suddenly a crime, people seem to be saying, "Hey. Everyone else is jumping off a bridge. Why aren't you?

Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?

An artist, if he's unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest. Just to open his mouth is to protest: against conformism, against what is official, public, or national, what everyone else feels comfortable with, so the moment he opens his mouth, an artist is engaged, because opening his mouth is always scandalous.

A citizen sticks to conventions, does whatever is social. Artists, of course, must reject all conventions. I see no differently in reconciling the best of both of these worlds.

I didn't want to wear a checked shirt and grow a mustache - that's what you had to do, and everyone did.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

The only behaviour that is truly common is to avoid doing something because you think others might consider it common.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Too fat, too thin, too loud, too quiet - I was never going to fit the standards others created for me. Instead of complying, I protested.

For years, young adults have adopted extremely liberal world views in their attempts to be different, ultimately failing to see the irony that they've all become the same.

We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the tattooed lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.

Conformity is the ape of harmony.

Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended.

An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.

I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that's un-American somehow.

There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon.

The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.

Don't get caught up in fashion games. These kids probably think we're old, nark conformists or something, but really, they're just conforming in their own ways. They're conforming to nonconformity.

Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty.

All art is based on non-conformity.

Her own contempt for any forms of pressure society might put on her was so profound and instinctive that she as instinctively despised anyone who paid tribute to them.