Banksy Quotations

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

I don't know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.

There's obviously nothing wrong with selling your art - only an idiot with a trust fund would tell you otherwise. But it's confusing to know how far you should take it.

I wouldn't want to be remembered as the guy who contaminated a perfectly legitimate form of protest art with money and celebrities.

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

I love the way capitalism finds a place - even for its enemies.

All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars

I give away thousands of paintings for free.

I started painting graffiti in the classic New York style of big letters and characters but I was never very good at it.

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

It's great, I guess, when your paintings are hanging up in a museum.

At this time of year it's easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse.

You don't need planning permission to build castles in the sky

The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.

I think its pretty clear that film is the pre-eminent art form of our age. If Michaelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they’d be making Avatar, not painting a chapel. Film is incredibly democratic and accessible, it’s probably the best option if you actually want to change the world, not just re-decorate it.

I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush - that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it.

I wouldnt want to be remembered as the guy who contaminated a perfectly legitimate form of protest art with money and celebrities.

I know street art can feel increasingly like the marketing wing of an art career, so I wanted to make some art without the price tag attached. There's no gallery show or book or film. It's pointless. Which hopefully means something.

Brandalism Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, rearrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. 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.

A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.

You can win the rat race but you're still a rat.

If you want someone to be ignored then build a life-size bronze statue of them and stick it in the middle of town. It doesn't matter how great you were, it'll always take an unfunny drunk with climbing skills to make people notice you.

I've never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn't seem very appealing to me.

If it doesn’t matter, get rid of it. If you can’t get rid of it, it matters.

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

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.

Anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot

the people who run our cities dont understand graffiti because they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit... the people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff.... any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours, it belongs to you ,, its yours to take, rearrange and re use.Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head..

It doesn't take much to be a successful artist-all you need to do is dedicate your entire life to it.

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.

When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.

The art world is the biggest joke going. It's a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak. And modern art is a disgrace - never have so many people used so much stuff and taken so long to say so little.

Not everyone will understand your journey. That's okay. You're here to live your life, not to make everyone understand.

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

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

Traditional graffiti writers have a bunch of rules they like to stick to, and good luck to them, but I didn't become a graffiti artist so I could have somebody else tell me what to do. If you're the type who gets sentimental about people scribbling over your stuff, I suggest graffiti is probably not the right hobby for you.

All I know about what people think of my gear is what a couple of my friends tell me, and one of them always wants to borrow money, so I'm not sure how reliable he is.

I don't know if street art ever really works indoors. If you domesticate an animal, it goes from being wild and free to sterile, fat and sleepy. So maybe the art should stay outside.

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.

The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it'll be paraded round Sotheby's by people wearing white gloves.

People who enjoy waving flags don't deserve to have one

Nothing is black and white, and there is no purity and there is no such thing has justice.

When he time comes to leave, just walk away quietly and don't make any fuss.

People seem to think if they dress like a revolutionary they don`t actually have to behave like one.

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.

We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.

The human race is the most stupid and unfair kind of race. A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising a lot of people have given up compeating altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk and shout abuse. What the human race needs is a lot more streakers.

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

T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.

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.

Nobody knows what you feel inside unless you tell them.

One Original Thought is worth 1000 Meaningless Quotes.

Fight the fighters, not their wars.

A recent survey or North American males found 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey.

Some people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own.

Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass. When winter came the bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself 'I hope that busy little bee will share some of his honey with me.' But the bee was nowhere to be found - he had died of a stress induced coronary disease.

Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal.

If at first you don't succeed, Call an airstrike.

Gaza is often described as 'the world's largest open air prison' because no one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons - they don’t have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost everyday.

In the future, everybody will be anonymous for 15 minutes.

You're advised not to drink the replica Arab spring water.

I have no interest in ever coming out. I’m just trying to make the pictures look good; I’m not into trying to make myself look good. And besides, it’s a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old kids out there.

If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.

If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.

Policemen and security guards wear hats with a peak that comes down low over their eyes. Apparently this is for psychological reasons. Eyebrows are very expressive and you appear a lot more authoritative if you keep them covered up. The advantage of this is that it makes a lot harder for cops to see anything more than six foot off the ground. Which is why painting rooftops and bridges is so easy.

As far as I can tell the only thing worth looking at in most museums of art is all the schoolgirls on daytrips with the art departments.

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.

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.

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?

The grumpier you are, the more assholes you meet.

I am unable to comment on who may or may not be Banksy, but anyone described as being 'good at drawing' doesn't sound like Banksy to me.

I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore.

If Michaelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today they’d be making Avatar, not painting a chapel.

Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers,

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,

This is a big surprise I don't agree with the concept of award ceremonies, but I'm prepared to make an exception for the ones I'm nominated for. The last time there was a naked man covered in gold paint in my house, it was me.

I figure there are enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is. You ask a lot of kids today what they want to be when they grow up, and they say, 'I want to be famous.' You ask them, 'For what reason?' and they don't know or care. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong - in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes.

I don't believe in anything. I'm just here for the violence.

The difference between freedom and slavery is one thin line

I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don't like it, you can paint over it!

It's impossible to predict which paintings will last and which won't. In New Orleans I painted on a dilapidated shop in a street littered with abandoned cars and rotting mattresses, then two hours later the piece was gone. It turned out I'd picked the side of a crack house and the proprietor didn't like the attention.

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.

Although you might have to creep about at night and lie to your mum it’s actually one of the more honest art forms available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer and nobody is put off by the price of admission.

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

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.

I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in - like peace and justice and freedom.

Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - it's wet.

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

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

Some people criticize me for using sources that are a bit low brow (this quote is from 'Gladiator') but you know what? 'I'm just going to use that hostility to make me stronger, not weaker' as Kelly Rowland said on the X Factor,

Today's art has been cancelled due to police activity.

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.

We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves,

I originally set out to try and save the world, but now I'm not sure I like it enough.

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

The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal,

Live as a villain, die as a hero

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

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.