Andy Warhol, born in 1928, was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. Renowned for his exploration of consumer culture and celebrity, he created iconic artworks using silkscreen printing, depicting everyday objects and famous figures like Marilyn Monroe. His studio, The Factory, became a cultural hub for avant-garde artists and celebrities. Warhol’s work blurred the line between high art and popular culture, profoundly influencing contemporary art and society. He challenged traditional notions of artistic expression and value, elevating mundane objects to the status of art. Warhol’s legacy endures as his exploration of fame, consumerism, and media remains relevant in today’s digital age, making him one of the most influential figures in modern art history.

Andy Warhol Quotes

1. “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”
— Andy Warhol

2. “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
— Andy Warhol

3. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
— Andy Warhol

4. “Perception precedes reality.”
— Andy Warhol

5. “As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.”
— Andy Warhol

6. “Look poor, think rich.”
— Andy Warhol

7. “Art is what you can get away with.”
— Andy Warhol

8. “Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”
— Andy Warhol

9. “Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.”
— Andy Warhol

10. “People should fall in love with their eyes closed.”
— Andy Warhol

11. “I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.”
— Andy Warhol

12. “There is beauty in everything, Just not everybody sees it.”
— Andy Warhol

13. “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.”
— Andy Warhol

14. “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”
— Andy Warhol

15. “Fashion is more art than art is.”
— Andy Warhol

16. “An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.”
— Andy Warhol

17. “I like boring things.”
— Andy Warhol

18. “Think rich, look poor.”
— Andy Warhol

19. “The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.”
— Andy Warhol

20. “The world fascinates me.”
— Andy Warhol

21. “When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.”
— Andy Warhol

22. “I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do.”
— Andy Warhol

23. “I learned that you actually have more power when you shut up.”
— Andy Warhol

24. “New things are always better than old things.”
— Andy Warhol

25. “I want to die with my blue jeans on.”
— Andy Warhol

26. “Kiss me with your eyes.”
— Andy Warhol

27. “You have to do stuff that average people don’t understand because those are the only good things.”
— Andy Warhol

28. “I am a deeply superficial person.”
— Andy Warhol

29. “But I always say, one’s company, two’s a crowd, and three’s a party.”
— Andy Warhol

30. “Why do people spend their time being sad when they could be happy?”
— Andy Warhol

31. “You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.”
— Andy Warhol

32. “I think everybody should like everybody.”
— Andy Warhol

33. “Pop art is about liking things.”
— Andy Warhol

34. “I smoke pot because I want to go to heaven before I die.”
— Andy Warhol

35. “Security breeds stagnation.”
— Andy Warhol

36. “The reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.”
— Andy Warhol

37. “I never fall apart, because I never fall together.”
— Andy Warhol

38. “Land really is the best art.”
— Andy Warhol

39. “I’m seeking out a new way to live and if it’s surfing, that’s the way I’ll do it. I’ll be a surfer for the rest of my life.”
— Andy Warhol

40. “You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.”
— Andy Warhol

41. “Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”
— Andy Warhol

42. “Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.”
— Andy Warhol

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

44. “People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.”
— Andy Warhol

45. “The nicer I am, the more people think I’m lying.”
— Andy Warhol

46. “If you’re not trying to be real, you don’t have to get it right. That’s art.”
— Andy Warhol

47. “I wake up every morning. I open my eyes and think: here we go again.”
— Andy Warhol

48. “The moment you label something, you take a step-I mean, you can never go back again to seeing it unlabelled.”
— Andy Warhol

49. “I still care about people but it would be so much easier not to care. I don’t want to get too close; I don’t like to touch things…”
— Andy Warhol

50. “I don’t want to be smart, because being smart makes you depressed.”
— Andy Warhol

51. “Day after day I look in the mirror and I still see something.”
— Andy Warhol

52. “Everyone winds up kissing the wrong person goodnight.”
— Andy Warhol

53. “Fantasy love is much better than Reality Love.”
— Andy Warhol

54. “I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.”
— Andy Warhol

55. “The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald’s. Peking and Moscow don’t have anything beautiful yet.”
— Andy Warhol

56. “When you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something.”
— Andy Warhol

57. “Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?”
— Andy Warhol

58. “Pop art is for everyone.”
— Andy Warhol

59. “Every song has a memory; every song has the ability to make or break your heart, shut down the heart, and open the eyes. But I’m afraid if you look at a thing long enough; it loses all of its meaning.”
— Andy Warhol

60. “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.”
— Andy Warhol

61. “Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it’s different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white, and vice-versa.”
— Andy Warhol

62. “The key of the success of Studio 54 is that it’s a dictatorship at the door and a democracy on the dance floor.”
— Andy Warhol

63. “I wonder if it’s possible to have a love affair that lasts forever.”
— Andy Warhol

64. “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

65. “If there’s ever a problem, I film it and it’s no longer a problem. It’s a film.”
— Andy Warhol

66. “The mystery was gone but the amazement was just starting.”
— Andy Warhol

67. “If everybody’s not a beauty, then nobody is.”
— Andy Warhol

68. “If you wear a wig, everybody notices. But if you then dye the wig, people notice the dye.”
— Andy Warhol

69. “You can never predict what little things in the way somebody looks or talks or acts will set off peculiar emotional reactions in other people.”
— Andy Warhol

70. “People are always calling me a mirror and if a mirror looks into a mirror, what is there to see?”
— Andy Warhol

71. “One person in the 60s fascinated me more than anybody I had ever known. And the fascination I experienced was probably very close to a certain kind of love.”
— Andy Warhol

72. “Empty space is never-wasted space. Wasted space is any space that has art in it.”
— Andy Warhol

73. “Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?”
— Andy Warhol

74. “Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.”
— Andy Warhol

75. “When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.”
— Andy Warhol

76. “I wanted to paint nothing. I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and the soup can was it.”
— Andy Warhol

77. “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.”
— Andy Warhol

78. “Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art.”
— Andy Warhol

79. “Publicity is like eating peanuts. Once you start you can’t stop.”
— Andy Warhol

80. “Wasting money puts you in a real party mood.”
— Andy Warhol

81. “Death means a lot of money, honey. Death can really make you look like a star.”
— Andy Warhol

82. “If you can convince yourself that you look fabulous, you can save yourself the trouble of primping.”
— Andy Warhol

83. “Living in New York City gives people real incentives to want things that nobody else wants.”
— Andy Warhol

84. “Love and sex can go together and sex and unlove can go together and love and unsex can go together. But personal love and personal sex is bad.”
— Andy Warhol

85. “I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.”
— Andy Warhol

86. “My instinct about painting says, ‘if you don’t think about it, it’s right.’ As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets.”
— Andy Warhol

87. “Fashion wasn’t what you wore someplace anymore; it was the whole reason for going.”
— Andy Warhol

88. “Two people kissing always look like fish.”
— Andy Warhol

89. “I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.”
— Andy Warhol

90. “I want everybody to think alike. I think everybody should be a machine.”
— Andy Warhol

91. “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

92. “My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person.”
— Andy Warhol

93. “I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me.”
— Andy Warhol

94. “And your own life while it’s happening to you never has any atmosphere until it’s a memory.”
— Andy Warhol

95. “You meet rich people and you hang around with them, and one night they’ve had a few drinks and they say ‘I’ll buy it!’ Then they tell their friends, ‘You must have this person’s work, darling,’ and that’s all you need. That’s all it takes. Get it?”
— Andy Warhol

96. “Buying is more American than thinking, and I’m as American as they come.”
— Andy Warhol

97. “I always run into strong women who are looking for weak men to dominate them.”
— Andy Warhol

98. “Art? That’s a man’s name.”
— Andy Warhol

99. “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”
— Andy Warhol

100. “The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.”
— Andy Warhol

101. “Voyeurism is a director’s job description. It’s an artist’s, too.”
— Andy Warhol

102. “Everybody must have a fantasy.”
— Andy Warhol

103. “I think anybody can take a good picture. My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It’s being in the right place at the wrong time.”
— Andy Warhol

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

105. “Sometimes the little times you don’t think are anything while they’re happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life.”
— Andy Warhol

106. “I used to drink Coke all the time. It was so good. It gives you a lot of energy.”
— Andy Warhol

107. “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.’”
— Andy Warhol

108. “The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.”
— Andy Warhol

109. “I see art in everything. Your shoes. That car. This coffee cup. It’s art if you see it as art.”
— Andy Warhol

110. “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.”
— Andy Warhol

111. “I always wished I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with.”
— Andy Warhol

112. “I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is ‘In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.’”
— Andy Warhol

113. “I do the same thing everyday. I go to work and paint. I try to turn out as many pictures as I can.”
— Andy Warhol

114. “I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.”
— Andy Warhol

115. “Photographers feel guilty that all they do for a living is press a button.”
— Andy Warhol

116. “I want to be a machine.”
— Andy Warhol

117. “Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.”
— Andy Warhol

118. “Switzerland is my favorite place now, because it’s so – nothing. There is absolutely nothing to do.”
— Andy Warhol

119. “You’d be surprised how many people want to hang an electric chair on their living-room wall. Specially if the background color matches the drapes.”
— Andy Warhol

120. “The best museum is Bloomingdales.”
— Andy Warhol

121. “Romance is finding your fantasy in people who don’t have it.”
— Andy Warhol

122. “A picture means I know where I was every minute. That’s why I take pictures. It’s a visual diary.”
— Andy Warhol

123. “My ideal city would be one long main street with no cross streets or side streets to jam up traffic. Just a long one-way street.”
— Andy Warhol

124. “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-ordina ry.”
— Andy Warhol

125. “Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.”
— Andy Warhol

126. “James Dean was the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.”
— Andy Warhol

127. “If I had gone ahead and died ten years ago, I’d probably be a cult figure today.”
— Andy Warhol

128. “I can never get over when you’re on the beach how beautiful the sand looks and the water washes it away and straightens it up and the trees and the grass all look great. I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.”
— Andy Warhol

129. “Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.”
— Andy Warhol

130. “I always notice flowers.”
— Andy Warhol

131. “Beauty is a sign of intelligence.”
— Andy Warhol

132. “Just because people throw it out and don’t have any use for it, doesn’t mean it’s garbage.”
— Andy Warhol

133. “Don’t think about making art…”
— Andy Warhol

134. “It must be hard to be a model, because you’d want to be like the photograph of you, and you can’t ever look that way.”
— Andy Warhol

135. “Exposure and attention make a work famous – the more you talk about it, the more attention it gets, the more validity it achieves.”
— Andy Warhol

136. “Traveling makes time go fast. So maybe traveling in space will give people time.”
— Andy Warhol

137. “Success is when the checks don’t bounce.”
— Andy Warhol

138. “Business Art is the step that comes after Art.”
— Andy Warhol

139. “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.”
— Andy Warhol

140. “I like to work when I’m not working – do something that may not be considered work, but to me it’s work. Getting exercise by going to the grocery store.”
— Andy Warhol

141. “I went to vote once, but I got too scared. I couldn’t decide whom to vote for.”
— Andy Warhol

142. “I never understand how the lipstick business goes on because lipstick lasts forever.”
— Andy Warhol

143. “People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like you’re watching television – you don’t feel anything.”
— Andy Warhol

144. “The biggest price you pay for love is that you have to have somebody around, you can’t be on your own, wich is always so much better.”
— Andy Warhol

145. “Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.”
— Andy Warhol

146. “People’s fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn’t have fantasies you wouldn’t have problems because you’d just take whatever was there.”
— Andy Warhol

147. “I broke something and realized I should break something once a week to remind me how fragile life is.”
— Andy Warhol

148. “I don’t believe people die. They just go uptown. To Bloomingdales. They just take longer to get back.”
— Andy Warhol

149. “Everything is beautiful. Pop is everything.”
— Andy Warhol

150. “When you work with people who misunderstand you, instead of getting transmissions, you get transmutations, and that’s much more interesting in the long run.”
— Andy Warhol