Top 55 Andy Warhol Quotes

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.

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.

I think it would be terrific if everybody was alike.

If you wear a wig, everybody notices. But if you then dye the wig, people notice the dye.

I’ll bet there are a lot of artists that nobody hears about who just make more money than anybody. The people that do all the sculptures and paintings for big building construction. We never hear about them, but they make more money than anybody.

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.

Everyone needs a fantasy.

Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.

I think the first photograph I did was a ballplayer. It was a way of showing action or something.

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.

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.

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?

I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.

I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.

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.

I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.

Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they’ll just have to learn how to be babies longer.

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 like boring things.

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.

My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person.

The most exciting thing is not doing it. If you fall in love with someone and never do it, it’s much more exciting.

The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

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.’

In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Checks aren’t money.

Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.

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.

Voyeurism is a director’s job description. It’s an artist’s, too.

I went to vote once, but I got too scared. I couldn’t decide whom to vote for.

I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.

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.

During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don’t think they’ve ever remembered.

I love Los Angeles, and I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

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 like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

I think everybody should like everybody.

Fantasy love is much better than reality love.

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don’t know. I mean, how can you tell?

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.

Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil – of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them and tape-record them. But I didn’t think of myself as evil – just realistic.

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.

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

I’ve decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.

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.

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.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Land really is the best art.

I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is ‘In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.’

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.

I want to be a machine.

I want to die with my blue jeans on.