Top 342 Quotes & Sayings by Andy Warhol

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American artist Andy Warhol.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.
When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.
I never think that people die. They just go to department stores. — © Andy Warhol
I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.
I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.
Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.
Land really is the best art.
It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.
Human beings are born solitary, but everywhere they are in chains - daisy chains - of interactivity. Social actions are makeshift forms, often courageous, sometimes ridiculous, always strange. And in a way, every social action is a negotiation, a compromise between 'his,' 'her' or 'their' wish and yours.
I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'
I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work', because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.
If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art.
Art is what you can get away with.
I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs. — © Andy Warhol
I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.
I think it would be terrific if everybody was alike.
I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.
Everyone needs a fantasy.
I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money.
Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign again the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.
Fantasy love is much better than reality love.
If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.
I like boring things.
I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?
I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.
I want to be a machine.
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.
I am a deeply superficial person.
I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.
I went to vote once, but I got too scared. I couldn't decide whom to vote for.
What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke. Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too.
When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums.
Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.
Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.
I love Los Angeles, and I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.
It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger.
The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don't try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary. — © Andy Warhol
I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don't try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary.
Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.
Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television.
During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered.
I've been invited to the White House about five times. I think the greatest thing would be if they actually invited everybody to the White House every night... they'd just take about 500 people a night. Everybody would just love this country because it's so thrilling to go there. It really is.
Voyeurism is a director's job description. It's an artist's, too.
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?
In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.
My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat - or in film's case 'run on' - manifests my belief that we spend much of our lives seeing without observing.
I'm for mechanical art. When I took up silk screening, it was to more fully exploit the preconceived image through the commercial techniques of multiple reproduction.
People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly. — © Andy Warhol
People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.
Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.
I think they should have movies in restaurants. I can't believe that so many people get together just to sit there. It's so abstract... isn't it abstract? What are these people sitting here watching?
People sometimes say the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal.
Art? That's a man's name.
I want to die with my blue jeans on.
My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.
Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
I think everybody should like everybody.
Since I was shot, everything is such a dream to me. Like I don't know whether I'm alive or whether I died. I wasn't afraid before. And having been dead once, I shouldn't feel fear. But I am afraid. I don't understand why.
I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'
I think kids should go to high school until they're 30. No, really, because people are staying younger now and there's nothing to do. If you stayed longer, then it would be really great.
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