“[Some correspondents] rightly claimed that State patronage [for artists and authors] is a better guarantee against starvation than private patronage, but seemed to me too ready to disregard the censorship that this implies. The usual line was that it is better for the artist to be a responsible member of a community than an anarchic individualist. The issue, however, is not between irresponsible "self-expression" and discipline; it is between truth and lies. Artists don't so much object to aesthetic discipline. Architects will design theatres or churches equally readily, writers will switch from the three-volume novel to the one-volume, or from the play to the film, according to the demand. But the point is that this is a political age. A writer inevitably writes—and less directly this applies to all the arts—about contemporary events, and his impulse is to tell what he believes to be the truth. But no government, no big organization, will pay for the truth. To take a crude example: can you imagine the British Government commissioning E. M. Forster to write A Passage to India?”
He could only write it because he was not dependent on State aid.
"As I Please" column in The Tribune (13 October 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/ http://alexpeak.com/twr/ooc/#2</sup>
As I Please (1943–1947)
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George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950Related quotes

Once Upon A Time in the East: A Story of Growing up, Chatto & Windus, 2017, page 259 (ISBN 9781784740689).
Memoir, 2017

Book 2 “Esbern Snare: The Northern Werewolf,” Chapter 1 “Consequences of Ill-Considered Dealings With the Supernatural” (p. 218)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, pp. 139-140

Attributed to Rodin in: Southwestern Art Vol. 6 (1977). p. 20; Partly cited in: A Toolbox for Humanity: More Than 9000 Years of Thought (2004) by Lloyd Albert Johnson, p. 7
1930s and later

Kierkegaard Journals and Papers 1A, 86 September 29, 1835
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat — as is the case with the better artists. But it does not seem right that they stop with the historical themes already given and, so to speak, think that only these are suitable for poetic treatment, because these particular themes, which intrinsically are no more poetic than others, are now again animated and inspirited by a great poetic nature. In this case the artists advance by marching on the spot. — Why are modern heroes and the like not just as poetic? Is it because there is so much emphasis on clothing the content in order that the formal aspect can be all the more finished?

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 219: quote from 1903

“Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.”