Banksy Quotes

“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 shit.”
― Banksy

“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.”
― Banksy

“The art world is the biggest joke going. It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak.”
― Banksy

“There's no way you're going to get a quote from us" - (Metropolitan Police spokesperson) Wall And Piece by Banksy”
― robin gunningham

“Here's a mystery for you. Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do.”
― Charlie Brooker

“The value of story—of creator reputation—was vividly demon- strated in a social experiment conducted by the street artist Banksy during a 2013 New York residency. This is an artist whose work has sold for as much as $1.87 million at auction. Banksy erected a street stall on a sidewalk bordering Central Park and had a vendor sell his prints for sixty dollars each. He then posted a video of his experi- ment. Footage from a hidden camera captures some of his most iconic images displayed on a table. Tourists and locals meander by. His first sale doesn’t come for hours. A woman buys two small works for her children, negotiating a fifty percent discount. Around four in the afternoon, a woman from New Zealand buys two more. A little over an hour later, a Chicago man who “just needs something for the walls,” buys four. With each sale, the vendor gives the buyer a hug or kiss. At 6 p.m., he closes the stall, having made $420. In June 2015, one of these stenciled prints, Love Is in the Air—an image of a masked protestor throwing a bouquet of flowers—sold for $249,000. How much of the value of Banksy’s art is tied up in his name, his global brand?”
― Alan Philips, The Age of Ideas: Unlock Your Creative Potential

“There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover."

Metropolitan Police spokesperson”
― Banksy, Wall and Piece

“I followed along with Sky News and BBC News during the UK 2024 riots. The BBC News feed distinctly changed after it emerged the killer of the young girls was a BBC TV star. The Sky news feed distinctly changed after the rioting did not stop. After a week of watching both of them, I never trusted either news feed and started to get my news from social media. Both channels reported the Banksy police box artwork as ‘fish’ when they were flesh eating piranhas!”
― Steven Magee