Stephen Karam Quotes

As President, I will end once and for all the use of taxpayer funds to promote the National Endowment for the Arts and other programs that subsidize amoral and degrading activities.

It is not true that I oppose government funding of the arts.

I have written favourably in support of subsidy for the arts since the 1960s, and I continue to believe absolutely in subsidy, as I do in the BBC licence fee.

Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival?

You cut their money back, for one thing... I go back a long way with the NEA.

Everyone town of 100,000 in the United States should have a Classical Theater supported by the town, or the state of the county, or the Federal Government, as they have in every civilized country.

Mr. Chairman, obviously a $60 million cut in the National Endowment for the Arts would be a disaster.

The reason the National Endowment needs to exist is simply that the not-for-profit sector cannot make it on its own.

As long as Federal dollars are used to finance art projects, Congress will have the responsibility to its constituents to determine what type of art taxpayer dollars will support.

[I am not for] spending the public money in the encouragement of the Fine Arts. Whether it is to be painting or sculpture, or both; if painting, what sort of painting, what are to be the subjects chosen, and who are to be the artists employed? All these questions furnish ample food for discussion, difference, and dispute.

In 1997, the Labour government set out to strengthen funding for the arts - and achieved it.

It seems to me, in this culture, you need to have a subsidy to do theatre, not that I put theatre above anything else.

I suppose what's so amazing about working at the National Theatre is that, because it's a subsidized theatre, you're not trying to create a product that's going to have a mass market in order to make the money back.

We should not have a tin cup out for something as important as the arts in this country, the richest in the world. Creative artists are always begging, but always being used when it's time to show us at our best.

As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.

We're under the Arts Council under the Minister for the Arts. The Minister for the Arts and the Minister for Industrial Development have great difficulty in agreeing over who should fund what in terms of film.

When I was planning Family Viewing, the Ontario Film Development Corporation came into existence.

European museums are all dependent on government financing. The moment European governments are under financial pressure, their budgets are cut.

Any religious organization should be allowed to hire based on their religious preference- but not with federal dollars.

The present government is very insistent that business sponsorship should replace government sponsorship of the arts. Business sponsorship won't happen unless you make tax concessions, which they won't.

This funding from the National Endowment for the Arts has been like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

For many years, the government of Canada has massively supported orchestras and the arts in general.

Individual and corporate support is vital to building on London's leadership in the arts, and I hope others will join me in wanting to build on the National's role at the heart of modern theatre and sustaining it long into the future.

We can adhere to the Henry Hyde amendment by saying that no federal funds will be used for abortions. And that's the bottom line for me.

A boatload of government money is indeed a gift. Unless, I suppose, you're one of the saps paying for the cargo.