Quotes About Funding The Arts

“When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply asked,'then what are we fighting for?”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“What liberals mean by 'goose-stepping' or 'ethnic cleansing' is generally something along the lines of 'eliminating taxpayer funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.' But they can't say that, or people would realize they're crazy.”

— Ann Coulter

“All the arts are predominantly national, and therefore the Australian Film Commission should be funding us. The battle gets more and more vicious each year.”

— Ann Macbeth

“Funding for sports (and the arts) are often the first things facing the chop in difficult times.”

— Lucy Powell

“No matter what your political persuasion, you can find a guide that makes it quick, easy and painless to exercise your right to vote. Wanna know what a certain proposition put forth by a cadre of undisclosed billionaires which cuts funding for public education, arts and infrastructure means? Use the voting guide!”

— Steven Weber

“I'm a great candidate for why arts funding shouldn't be cut, because I had no experience other than what was at school, I'm from a working-class town, there were no theaters, and the cinema closed when I was a kid. Anything that gave me a voice or a way to express myself I went running headlong toward.”

— Ben Daniels

“The unhappy irony is that, while 'Glee' is hitting the heights, school arts funding is being slashed across the country due to the steep recession and declining tax revenues.”

— James Wolcott

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

— Norm Dicks

“I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.”

— Rita Dove

“I want to promote the introduction of art history in primary schools and to convince the general public that, even in a period of economic crisis, arts funding is an absolute necessity at the federal, state, and local levels.”

— Camille Paglia

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

— Camille Paglia

“This kind of compartmentalizing-separating one's livelihood from one's social aspirations-is part of the reason David Koch, the hidden hand behind a lot of ultraconservatives and, reportedly, the Tea Party movement in the United States, transforms himself into a respected arts patron by funding a theater at Lincoln Center, or why at Swiss bank that helps U.S. depositors avoid paying taxes generously supports symphony halls and the ballet. It's almost as if there are moral scales, and by tossing some loot on one side, you can balance out the precarious situation your reputation might be getting into on the other.”

— David Byrne

“I am adamant that we must not cut back on funding of the teaching of the arts in the schools: music, painting, theater, dance, all of it. The great thing about the arts is that the only way you learn how to do it is by doing it.”

— David McCullough

“I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that. It is true that the arts at MIT don't have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.”

— Alan Lightman

“We can become very short-sighted in terms of objectives. The first thing to go during times of economic crisis and budget cuts is funding for things that are essential and not-quantifiable, like the arts. Save Big Bird”

— Julia Stiles