Free speech is important whether you like what's being said or not. The reason why it's so important is that the entire spectrum of ideas needs to be heard so that the best ones are embraced and rise to the top. If you're a liberal and don't like conservative speech and you try to stifle that conservative speech, you need to be prepared for your own progressive speech to be stifled when the power shifts out of your favor.

Art shows and the institutions end up being the couriers for culture for the next generation and are an important component as well. It may seem ironic from one perspective, but I think if you look at my overall strategy, it's actually not out of step.

I don't agree with most forms of censorship, and I especially don't agree with the idea that one needs to be from the same cultural, ethnic, or religious background as the subjects they portray in order to be qualified to portray those subjects. I believe that compassion and empathy should cross all of those category barriers, and the conversations art creates can be inflammatory initially, but I think are most often constructive and healing in the long run.

I think that the influence of people with power and money to distort democracy and have their interests served before the rest of the population is the biggest problem. That is caused by two things: campaign finance and the way that's structured, and by the Citizen's United supreme court decision. So those two things are keeping democracy from working right.

I've never really considered myself just a street artist. I consider myself a populist.

I hate to say Americans are ignorant and lazy, but a lot of them are ignorant and lazy. It's just like what I was talking about with Rebel Music and art. When you live in a place that has a lot of good things that make life easier, it's easier to take them for granted. But what frustrates me to no end are people who want to blame Obama or blame anything that is something that if they were actually doing anything as simple as voting, it might not be as bad as it is.

I've never had an original thought in my lifeand there's tons of people on the internet happy to tell me just that.