100 Graffiti Quotes

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

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Famous Graffiti Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some people are enraged, and some people are applauding. If there were a mission statement for graffiti, that would be it. — Barry McGee

Short Graffiti Quotes

  • Everybody's trying to leave their mark on the world. That's why there's graffiti and babies. — Kristen Schaal
  • Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint. — Banksy
  • There are four basic human needs; food, sleep, sex and revenge. — Banksy
  • 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
  • When you can't think of anything else, photograph graffiti, nudes, or plants. — Bill Jay
  • I've never really considered myself just a street artist. I consider myself a populist. — Shepard Fairey
  • Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else. — Banksy
  • Gray hair is God's graffiti. — Bill Cosby

Graffiti Image Quotes

Graffiti Art Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Graffiti Artist Quotes

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

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

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

I used to tell everyone I met to be an artist..... I don't do that any more. — Banksy

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

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

But there's no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We're not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it's hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity. — Banksy

Take two paintings by the same artist, one has a signature and the other doesn't. The signed picture is generally more valuable. The signature is almost graffiti or a tagging system, yet it can become more important than the subject. — Gavin Turk

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

People Writing About Graffiti

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 Randall Dale Adams

Randall Dale Adams
quotes on justice, freedom and government

16 82
Read quotes by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson
quotes on life, death and love

510 5126
Read quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
quotes on love, friendship and education

68 585
Read quotes by Kristen Schaal

Kristen Schaal
quotes on love, life and friendship

43 243

More Graffiti Quotes

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

I don't think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it. — Banksy

The mistake that was made in the '70s is we stopped policing the streets, we stopped cleaning the streets, we stopped cleaning the graffiti off buildings, we stopped supporting our cultural institutions and building parks and schools and all those kinds of things. — Michael Bloomberg

Nobody ever listened to me until they didn't know who I was — Banksy

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

Remember crime against property is not real crime. People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access. — Banksy

It's strange with graffiti. You put a lot out, but you don't get that much back because not many people know who's doing it. You have your peers of about 10 guys who know you are the one painting. — KAWS

The thing about social media is that it is anonymous, so it can be much more vitriolic and extreme than normal media and yet it is there for everyone to see. It is kind of like electronic graffiti. The political process is accelerated and intense in a way that I don't believe it ever really has been before. — Tony Abbott

Now everybody's bloggin'. I heard somebody say, "Blogging is just graffiti with punctuation." Everyone's an authority so there's nobody in power, 'cause everyone thinks they're in power. — Ice T

I used to breakdance, be a b-boy. I love hip-hop from back in the graffiti days, growing up listening to Michael Jackson. Loved it from birth. I know it all, from Afrika Bambaataa, the roots and the beginning. I came up in a good era. — DJ Khaled

Environmental damage such as graffiti, fly-posting and general littering is a menace that is becoming all too prevalent, not just in inner cities but in many communities - urban and rural. — Margaret Beckett

In Conclusion

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