Banksy Quotes
- All Quotes
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My lawyer's opinion is that the cops might not actually be able to charge me with criminal damage any more - because theoretically my graffiti actually increases the value of property rather than decreasing it. That's his theory, but then my lawyer also believes wearing novelty cartoon ties is a good look.
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'You can win the rat race but you're still a rat.'
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I started painting graffiti in the classic New York style of big letters and characters but I was never very good at it.
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Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
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'People who enjoy waving flags don't deserve to have one.'
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'We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.'
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'People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.'
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I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.
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'I got home at last and crawled into bed next to my girlfriend. I told her I'd had an epiphany that night about using stencils and she told me to stop taking that drug 'cos it's bad for your heart.'
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'We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.
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'Try to avoid painting in places where they still point at aeroplanes.'
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The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a sh*t.
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'There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover.' - Metropolitan Police Spokesperson
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'Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people' affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.'
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If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.
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On Painting Rats, and the Glorification of Them. They exist without permission. They are hated, hunted and persecuted. They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilizations to their knees. If you are dirty, insignificant, and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.
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'Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie.'
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I am unable to comment on who may or may not be Banksy, but anyone described as 'good at drawing' doesn't sound like Banksy to me.
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All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.
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'I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect myself.'
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I tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.
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I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website - but on the internet, people only look at pictures of kittens.
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If you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you've made your own sculpture.
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I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it.