“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter
"The Individual, Society and the State" (1940) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1940/individual.htm <br class="br">Context: The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is "public opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter
“Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist
An Interview by Larry McCaffery
Essays
Variant: I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America
David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War https://ia802604.us.archive.org/9/items/incidentsanecdot00port/incidentsanecdot00port.pdf (1885), p. 274. <br class="br">Context: It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled 'His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America'. The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost 'His Excellency' less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!
Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist
Grinker and Robbins (1954) cited in: Eugene Frederick Hahn (1956) Stuttering: significant theories and therapies. p. 17
“To refuse has so many more consequences than submitting.”
Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects
Source: Sharp Objects
Steven Barnes (1952) American writer and author
Source: Street Lethal (1983), Chapter 16 “Warrior” (p. 239)