When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories.

Although, this is often used with negative connotations, I see ideology as an inherent part of culture.

Every artistic expression is either influenced by or adds something to politics.

When I was a boy, unconsciously, spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories.

Comedy makes the subversion of the existing state of affairs possible.

It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control.

Real socialism is inside man. It wasn't born with Marx. It was in the communes of Italy in the Middle Ages. You can't say it is finished.

Our homeland is the whole world. Our law is liberty. We have but one thought, revolution in our hearts.

I felt like an extraordinary hero. I was only five or six and I had the whole of life in my hands. Even if I had been driving the carriage of the sun I could not have felt any better.

All forms of power - even based on the consensus of the democratic system - react when they are being attacked, or when those who exercise power become a target.

With comedy I can search for the profound.

Nevertheless, the mode, the justification, and all the games involved in this war were dishonest.

Even before Europe was united in an economic level or was conceived at the level of economic interests and trade, it was culture that united all the countries of Europe. The arts, literature, music are the connecting link of Europe.

We thought the church had withdrawn from interfering in Italian politics... but instead there is a terrible resurgence. These are ugly signs for freedom of expression.

Know how to live the time that is given you.

It is extremely dangerous to talk about limits or borders. It is vital, instead, that we remain completely open, that we are always involved, and that we aim to contribute personally in social events.

In a way, the American side descended to Saddam's level, which happens often in these types of circumstances. That is why the people in Iraq do not accept the current state of affairs.

A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.

Culturally, I have always been part of the proletariat. I lived side by side with the sons of glassblowers, fishermen and smugglers. The stories they told were shaper satires about the hypocrisy of authority and the middle classes, the two-facedness of teachers and lawyers and politicians. I was born politicized.

Every time you touch those who have power over the media, they seek to stop you.

For some time it's been my habit to use images when preparing a speech: rather than write it down, I illustrate it.

I am the jongleur. I leap and pirouette, and make you laugh. I make fun of those in power, and I show you how puffed up and conceited are the big shots who go around making wars in which we are the ones who get slaughtered. I reveal them for what they are. I pull out the plug, and... pssss... they deflate.

It is from him, from Beolco Ruzzante, that I've learned to free myself from conventional literary writing and to express myself with words that you can chew, with unusual sounds, with various techniques of rhythm and breathing, even with the rambling nonsense-speech of the 'grammelot.'

It's not bad at all, getting a Nobel and making so many old fossils explode with rage.

Laughter does not please the mighty.

Satire can always be found everywhere. A people without love for satire is a dead people.

We had extremely democratic town councils in medieval Italy which knew the value of working together, and every now and then, down the centuries, this spirit returns.

Blush at your faults.

It is extremely dangerous to talk about limits or borders. It is vital instead that we remain completely open that we are always involved and that we aim to contribute personally in social events.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.

The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art.

My art became very public.

Riding a race bike is an art - a thing that you do because you feel something inside.

The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

We have often been attracted to the story of the other, the outcast. And he and I just loved working together, so it just kept happening, and our relationship is completely bound up with our work. We enjoy each other's art.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design.

Art is an expression of who you are. Parts that I play are my sculptures.

There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population.

There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.