Wayne Swan Quotes

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.

Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust the great artists.

Now, I don't know whether a film can change the world, but I know that it starts - I know the power of it - I know that it starts people thinking about how to change the world.

I try to make a film that's very entertaining, very funny, but also gives you something to think about. And the strongest thing I have to offer is my point of view, to get across how I see the world in hopes that it can change the way other people see the world, hopefully for the better.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.

Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.

Hollywood likes to boast that it can elevate the national conscience.

I view music as entertainment. When I'm on stage, I don't look at that as a platform for sharing ideology. Otherwise I'd be a zealot myself. That's why, when people ask me, 'Do you think you can change the world through your music?' I say, 'I doubt it.'

I think as the world changes, we have to keep up. We have to note what is happening, and I think writing has always had a powerful corrective influence and possibility. We have to write about what's good, and we also have to write about parts of our culture that are not good, that are not working out. I think it takes a new eye.

I think the audience know which films are aimed at their pocket, and which films are aimed at their soul. There are a lot of films out there made by people who are genuinely trying to make a change.

I think, because I'm an artist, part of my job is to be a barometer, an antenna. It's in the air and it resonates with a lot of people to lighten up.

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

A great byproduct of a TV show, movie, or play is when it can act as a catalyst for someone.

Can a film really change anything? I mean, what was the last time? Maybe the Italian neo-realists, where they became the voice and the heart and the soul of Italy, a nation that had been destroyed. I don't know.

I'm an artist, therefore I think I am sensitive to human pain.

I felt I had an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of great soul musicians of the past, who made a lot of social and political commentary through their music.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.

It can't change anything immediately, but films can absolutely be catalysts for conversation.

If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.

It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.

A mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work of art, because he really looks without seeing, and though he may have noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without character... the artist on the contrary, sees; that is to say, his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of nature.

As a filmmaker, you've got to have a nose for what's going on culturally. You have to feel it. It doesn't have to be manga or music, but you need some kind of antenna. That's very important.