105 Graffiti Art Quotes

Following is our list of graffiti art quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about graffiti artist.

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Famous Graffiti Art Quotes

Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop. - Hunter S. Thompson

Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop. — Hunter S. Thompson

After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture. — Jeffrey Deitch

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. - Banksy

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. — Banksy

Graffiti is like building a career. And there is a dialogue with the other artists out there mostly fellow writers because a lot of people who don't paint just see a blur when they look at it. — KAWS

If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? - Melvin Glover

If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? — Melvin Glover

Is graffiti art or vandalism? That word has a lot of negative connotations and it alienates people, so no, I don't like to use the word 'art' at all. — Banksy

Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it, and there's no admission fee. — Banksy

People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly. — Banksy

Graffiti is a pathetic attempt at anonymous recognition. - Randall Dale Adams

Graffiti is a pathetic attempt at anonymous recognition. — Randall Dale Adams

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss. — Banksy

Graffiti doesn't exist unless someone got a photo, because it's gone immediately. — Jeffrey Deitch

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone. - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Obviously murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes. But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other. — Rudy Giuliani

Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward. — Ben Eine

One piece of graffiti doesn't mean much. Forty pieces of graffiti might mean something... It's all about connecting the dots. — Kim Rossmo

Short Graffiti Art Quotes

  • Art is a line around your thoughts. — Gustav Klimt
  • Art is what you can get away with. — Andy Warhol
  • When you can't think of anything else, photograph graffiti, nudes, or plants. — Bill Jay
  • All great art is born of the metropolis. — Ezra Pound
  • Art is literacy of the heart — Elliot W. Eisner
  • Everybody's trying to leave their mark on the world. That's why there's graffiti and babies. — Kristen Schaal
  • Art is all about doing what you shouldn't. — Nobuyoshi Araki
  • Art is the colors and textures of your imagination. — Meghan Trainor
  • Art is the signature of civilizations. — Beverly Sills
  • Art is an international language, understood by all. — Igor Babailov

Graffiti Art Image Quotes

Graffiti art quote You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.

Graffiti Quotes

Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint. — Banksy

Bursts of gold on lavender melting into saffron. It's the time of day when the sky looks like it has been spray-painted by a graffiti artist. — Mia Kirshner

Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place. — Banksy

Graffiti art quote The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenements halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. — Paul Simon

There are four basic human needs; food, sleep, sex and revenge. — Banksy

You're mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity. — Banksy

Graffiti art quote Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with. — Banksy

Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. — Calvin Coolidge

A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves. — Banksy

The way I make art, the way a lot of people make art, is as an extension of language and communication, where references are incredibly important. — Shepard Fairey

Graffiti Artist Quotes

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. — Banksy

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages. — Banksy

I've never really considered myself just a street artist. I consider myself a populist. — Shepard Fairey

Graffiti art quote There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else. — Banksy

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. — Banksy

Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for. — Banksy

I want to make the world a better place, for women, mainly. — Clare Balding

I started off as a graffiti artist in the South Bronx. My tag name was 'Loco' because I would go crazy and tag anywhere I wanted, in the weirdest places. — Swizz Beatz

The grumpier you are, the more assholes you meet. — Banksy

Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little. — Banksy

Street Art Quotes

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. — Ansel Adams

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow. — Imogen Cunningham

Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. lt must be spread everywhere – on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers' homes. — Vladimir Mayakovsky

A lot of people thought I got famous as a studio artist, then decided to cash in on it. But it actually was just a matter of survival for many years, and I felt it was really important for me to be able to say whatever I wanted with my street art and fine art. — Shepard Fairey

I am for an art that tells you the time of day, or where such and such a street is. I am for an art that helps old ladies across the street. — Claes Oldenburg

I believe that street photography is central to the issue of photography—that it is purely photographic, whereas the other genres, such as landscape and portrait photography, are a little more applied, more mixed in the with the history of painting and other art forms. — Joel Meyerowitz

Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a f**king sharp knife to it. — Banksy

A certain administration which I won't call by name took the arts out of the schools, and that left the brothers out on the street with nothing, so they went to the turntables and started rhyming. Then they had a way to express themselves, and that's the birth of hip-hop. — Isaac Hayes

Fashion is in the sky, in the street. — Coco Chanel

The arts can play a vital role in revitalizing neighborhoods, using and improving vacant space, bringing new jobs and new sense of opportunity, and improving public safety by generating more foot traffic and more eyes on the street. — Gavin Newsom

Graphic Art Quotes

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist - Francis of Assisi

He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist — Francis of Assisi

The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design. — Massimo Vignelli

Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy. — Jan Tschichold

Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people. — Shepard Fairey

The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive. — Vladimir Lenin

The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people. — El Lissitzky

The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects. — Wassily Kandinsky

Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated. — Paul Rand

You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt... or in front of a piece of graphic design. — Stefan Sagmeister

The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail. — John Wesley Powell

People Writing About Graffiti Art

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Banksy

Banksy
quotes on art, graffiti and advertising

124 2005
Read quotes by Jeffrey Deitch

Jeffrey Deitch
quotes on art, life and love

35 315
Read quotes by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson
quotes on life, death and love

510 5126
Read quotes by Randall Dale Adams

Randall Dale Adams
quotes on justice, freedom and government

16 82
Read quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
quotes on love, friendship and education

68 585
Read quotes by Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani
quotes on education, politics and government

265 930

More Graffiti Art Quotes

HIP-HOP HAS DIFFERENT ELEMENTS DEALING WITH MUSIC, RAP, GRAFFITI ART, B-BOYS (WHAT YOU CALL BREAK BOYS)... AND ALSO DEALING WITH CULTURE, AND A WHOLE MOVEMENT DEALING WITH WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING, AS WELL AS PEACE UNITY AND FUN. — Afrika Bambaataa

Graffiti ultimately wins out over proper art because it becomes part of your city, it' s a tool; "I'll meet you in that pub, you know, the one opposite that wall with a picture of a monkey holding a chainsaw". I mean, how much more useful can a painting be than that? — Banksy

I'm an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. I grow my art. I use the garden soil like it's a piece of cloth, and the plants and the trees, that's my embellishment for that cloth. You'd be surprised what the soil can do if you let it be your canvas. — Ron Finley

My mom is a painter, so I've been doing drawings and paintings as early as I can remember. Then there was this gap where I was doing graffiti in high school and making as much [traditional] art. — Alec Monopoly

People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine. — Banksy

It's a very frustrated feeling you get when the only people with good photos of you work are the police department. — Banksy

The art of cartooning is vulgarity. The only reason for cartooning to exist is to be on the edge. If you only take apart what they allow you to take apart, you're Disney. Cartooning is a low-class, for-the-public art, just like graffiti art and rap music. Vulgar but believable, that's the line I kept walking. — Ralph Bakshi

I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said 'that's clever it's an anagram of art' and I had to pretend I'd known that all along. — Banksy

I have a company that does design and animation, so obviously graffiti is definitely an intricate part of what we admire and respect in the art world. — Mick Ebeling

Graffiti is something written on a wall, and, of course, art can be exhibited or produced anywhere: a wall is just another venue. — Matthew Slotover

Art shows and the institutions end up being the couriers for culture for the next generation and are an important component as well. It may seem ironic from one perspective, but I think if you look at my overall strategy, it's actually not out of step. — Shepard Fairey

I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me. — Banksy

I did an art show for Donald Trump at his house in Palm Beach, Florida. It was a bunch of pop art and stuff like that, so I wasn't doing any graffiti at that time, so I'd say from about 2000 to 2006, I wasn't doing any graffiti. — Alec Monopoly

In Afghanistan I was doing street art because it was more open, but when I had a show, only men would come. I said, I'm an artist not only for men, but for women too. So that's why I like graffiti. — Malina Suliman

Rhyme written in graffiti xeroxed on blueprints, students influenced are now a nuisance. — Louis Eric Barrier

Graffiti's always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off. — Banksy

Should graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that. — Banksy

To me, that's the biggest problem with hip-hop today is the fact that everyone believes that all of hip-hop is rap music, and that, when you say "hip-hop," it's synonymous with rap. That when you say "hip-hop," you should be thinking about breakdancing, graffiti art, or MCing - which is the proper name for rap - DJing, beat-boxing, language, fashion, knowledge, trade. You should be thinking about a culture when you say, "hip-hop.". — KRS-One

Obviously my own work comes from a conceptual art tradition, but I love the graffiti artists, and I feel spiritually closer to them than to most contemporary art; they make the city a free space of diverse voices and we shouldn't get all cynical about them just because Banksy made some money. I collaborate sometimes with Krae, who is an old school east London graffiti writer. — Robert Montgomery

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