80 Best Banksy Quotes About Art and Love

1. Should graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: it is much more important than that. ~ Banksy

2. People who get up early are the cause of wars, death and hunger. ~ Banksy

3. They say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing and a second time a bit later when someone says your name for the last time. ~ Banksy

4. The art world is the biggest joke there is. It is a nursing home for the most privileged, the pretentious and the weak. ~ Banksy

5. I need someone to protect me from all the measures he takes to protect me. ~ Banksy

6. There are four basic needs for the human being: food, sleep, sex and revenge. ~ Banksy

7. I don’t know why people are so willing to put the details of their private lives in public, they forget that invisibility is a superpower. ~ Banksy

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

9. Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. ~ Banksy

10. Nobody listened to me until they knew who I was. ~ Banksy

11. The people who run our cities don’t understand graffiti because they think nothing has a right to exist unless it makes a profit. ~ Banksy

12. Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful talented people, leave the house before you find something worth staying for. ~ Banksy

13. There is nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place. ~ Banksy

14. Drawing graffiti is the most honest way you can be an artist. ~ Banksy

15. Bad artists imitate, the great ones steal. ~ Banksy

16. I had been painting rats for three years before someone said “that’s clever, that’s an anagram of art” and I had to pretend I’d known all along. ~ Banksy

17. As a precaution against committing acts of evil, it is our solemn duty to never do what we are told, this is the only way we can be sure. ~ Banksy

18. If you want someone to be ignored, build a life-size bronze statue and stick it in the center of town. ~ Banksy

19. People like to use military terms to describe what they do. ~ Banksy

20. If you are unloved, dirty and insignificant then rats become your role model. ~ Banksy

21. All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw? ~ Banksy

22. Some people become police officers because they want to make the world a better place. ~ Banksy

23. It’s a very frustrating feeling to get when the only people with good photos of your work are the police department. ~ Banksy

24. I think it’s pretty clear that film is the preeminent art form of our time. ~ Banksy

25. It doesn’t take money to do it, it doesn’t take an education to understand it, and there’s no admission fee. ~ Banksy

26. Bus stops are much more interesting and useful places to have art than museums. ~ Banksy

27. They have rearranged the world to face you. They never asked your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs. ~ Banksy

28. Be good at cheating and you never have to be good at anything else. ~ Banksy

29. Modern art is a disaster area. ~ Banksy

30. People either love me or hate me, or don’t really care. ~ Banksy

31. People who enjoy waving flags don’t deserve to have one. ~ Banksy

32. Sometimes I feel so bad about the state of the world that I can’t even finish my second apple pie. ~ Banksy

33. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just real estate agents and big business barons. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall, it’s wet. ~ Banksy

34. I learned from experience that a painting is not finished when you drop the brush, it is when it begins. ~ Banksy

35. At this time of year it is easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity: lies, corruption or abuse. ~ Banksy

36. There is no gallery exhibition, neither book nor film. Meaningless. Which, hopefully, means something. ~ Banksy

37. Public reaction is what provides meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it. ~ Banksy

38. You live in the city and all the time there are signs telling you what to do and billboards trying to sell you something. ~ Banksy

39. Brandalism Any advertisement in a public space that does not give you the option to see it or is not yours. ~ Banksy

40. But there’s no getting around it, commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. ~ Banksy

41. It’s yours for the taking, rearrange and reuse. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock that someone just threw at your head. ~ Banksy

42. We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism collapses. In the meantime, we should all go shopping to console ourselves. ~ Banksy

43. When you go to an art gallery, you’re just a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of some millionaires. ~ Banksy

44. I know that street art can feel more and more like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to do some art without the price tag. ~ Banksy

45. The art we look at is made only by a select few. A small group creates, promotes, buys, exhibits and decides the success of art. ~ Banksy

46. What I hate most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mostly slow and obsessed with becoming our own artists. ~ Banksy

47. He speaks quietly, but carries a large can of paint. ~ Banksy

48. When it’s time to leave, just walk away quietly and don’t make a fuss. ~ Banksy

49. Many people never use their initiative because no one told them to. ~ Banksy

50. Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everyone could draw whatever they wanted. ~ Banksy

51. People say that graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish. But that’s only if done correctly. ~ Banksy

52. If you want to say something and have people listen to you, then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest, you have to live a lie. ~ Banksy

53. You don’t need planning permission to build castles in the sky. ~ Banksy

54. The advantage of this is that it makes it much harder for cops to see anything more than six feet off the ground. That’s why it’s so easy to paint roofs and bridges. ~ Banksy

55. If Michelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today, they would be making Avatar, not painting a chapel. ~ Banksy

56. If at first you don’t succeed, call in an airstrike. ~ Banksy

57. You owe nothing to companies. You especially don’t owe them any courtesies. ~ Banksy

58. Anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot. ~ Banksy

59. Some people represent authority without having any authority of their own. ~ Banksy

60. We call it bombing when we go out to paint, when of course it’s more like entertaining troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army. ~ Banksy

61. I wouldn’t want to be remembered as the guy who tainted a perfectly legitimate form of protest art with money and celebrities. ~ Banksy

62. Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. ~ Banksy

63. As far as I can tell, the only thing worth looking at in most art museums is all the coeds on field trips with the art departments. ~ Banksy

64. Live like a villain, die like a hero. ~ Banksy

65. Graffiti has always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then you rub it off. ~ Banksy

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

67. A recent survey o North American men found that 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey. ~ Banksy

68. The people who really disfigure our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawle giant slogans on buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. ~ Banksy

69. The world’s greatest crimes are not committed by people who break the rules. They are people following orders who drop bombs and massacre villages. ~ Banksy

70. People seem to think that if they dress like a revolutionary, they don’t really have to act like one. ~ Banksy

71. There are no exceptions to the rule that everyone thinks they are an exception to the rules. ~ Banksy

72. I love the way capitalism finds a place, even for its enemies. ~ Banksy

73. Many mothers would do anything for their children, except let them be themselves. ~ Banksy

74. If you have a statue in the center of town, you can pass it every day on the way to school and not even notice it, right? But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on your head, you’ve made your own sculpture. ~ Banksy

75. Modern art is a shame: never have so many people used so many things and taken so much time to say so little. ~ Banksy

76. An original thought is worth 1000 nonsense quotes. ~ Banksy

77. Your mind is working overtime when you’re being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation. At high speed with total clarity. ~ Banksy

78. It doesn’t take much to be a successful artist, all you need to do is dedicate your whole life to it. ~ Banksy

79. When you look at how society rewards so many people in the wrong, it’s hard not to see financial repayment as a hallmark of selfish mediocrity. ~ Banksy

80. I like to think I have the guts to stand up for myself anonymously in a Western democracy and ask for things no one else believes in, like peace, justice, and freedom. ~ Banksy