Art Quote by Joyce Carol Oates

You can't be both a writer and a politician, at least not a good writer. A writer must always tell the truth as he…

— Gore Vidal

We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth-tellers.

— Viola Davis

Art goes beyond politics. Even if there are writers who are involved in politics, eventually, in one or two centuries, it's not their politics…

— Eugene Ionesco

For a politician, the mans to power is paramount, and the ideology, in a way, can look after itself; I'm afraid a writer can't…

— David Hare

Artists are political in the sense that they've subtracted themselves from the structure of the marketplace and are contributing something that's not utilitarian. Even…

— Rachel Kushner

Any artist who aligns themselves with a politician is making a category error because what politicians do is not on a human scale, it…

— Zadie Smith

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

— Salman Rushdie

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is…

— Thom Yorke

I think, for some artists, the fear of taking on a political identity stems from not wanting to be pigeonholed as political actor or…

— Carrie Brownstein

I have a more direct avenue to expression as an artist than I ever would as a politician.

— Serj Tankian

You can't talk about life without talking about politics. You have to have both. If you're just a political person, you're going to burn…

— Robert Adams

I don't like the notion that artists have a responsibility to be political.

— Ezra Furman