Selling Out Quotes

“Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Once people said: Give me liberty or give me death. Now they say: Make me a slave, just pay me enough.”
― Todd Garlington

“To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.

(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)”
― Dorothy L Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

“Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.”
― Seneca, The Conquest of Happiness

“There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won't.”
― Annie Lennox

“The achievement of maturity, psychologically speaking, might be said to be the realization and acceptance that we simply cannot live independently from the world, and so we must live within it, with whatever compromises that might entail.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

“The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written.

(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

“To have opinions is to sell out to yourself. To have no opinion is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The saddest thing about selling out is just how cheaply most of us do it for.”
― James Bernard Frost

“Even the financial disclosure statements that political bloggers were required to post hadn't stemmed the suspicion that people's opinions weren't really their own. "Who's paying you?" was a retort that might follow any bout of enthusiasm, along with laughter - who would let themselves be bought?”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

“[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist

“The very idea of massified advertising meant that large cirulation newpapers were not in the business of selling information to people but rather of selling the attention of their readers to commercial concerns... to tap into the resorvoir of resources constitutred by the growing urban populations”
― Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

“Brockhurst, the champion of individualism, was soon launched on his favorite topic.

"The great fault of the American nation, which is the fault of republics, is the reduction of everything to the average. Our universities are simply the expression of the forces that are operating outside. We are business colleges purely and simply, because we as a nation have only one ideal—the business ideal."

"That's a big statement," said Regan.

"It's true. Twenty years ago we had the ideal of the lawyer, of the doctor, of the statesman, of the gentleman, of the man of letters, of the soldier. Now the lawyer is simply a supernumerary enlisting under any banner for pay; the doctor is overshadowed by the specialist with his business development of the possibilities of the rich; we have politicians, and politics are deemed impossible for a gentleman; the gentleman cultured, simple, hospitable, and kind, is of the dying generation; the soldier is simply on parade."

"Wow!" said Ricketts, jingling his chips. "They're off."

"Everything has conformed to business, everything has been made to pay. Art is now a respectable career—to whom? To the business man. Why? Because a profession that is paid $3,000 to $5,000 a portrait is no longer an art, but a blamed good business. The man who cooks up his novel according to the weakness of his public sells a hundred thousand copies. Dime novel? No; published by our most conservative publishers—one of our leading citizens. He has found out that scribbling is a new field of business. He has convinced the business man. He has made it pay.”
― Owen Johnson, Stover at Yale

“Being a prophet in the wilderness speaking truth to power typically leads to poverty and punishment. It is far easier to follow the lucrative trade winds of popular opinion but withheld honesty results in forgotten words.”
― Stewart Stafford

“What if you start to think of your art in terms of sales, too? Can you still be true to yourself?”
― Kevin Emerson, Exile

“I was called an 'ethnic traitor' and kicked in the pit of the stomach, then called a 'sellout' and stuck across the face again. I really couldn't understand what the last one meant. I knew the literal meaning of the word, of course, but I just couldn't bring myself to think that I was a sellout. I could sense the incongruity of the label but didn't have words to express it. Then someone who was able to say exactly what I was feeling appeared, like a superhero.

A voice rose up from the back of the classroom.

"We've never belonged to a country we could sell out”
― Kazuki Kaneshiro, Go

“You know, there used to be a difference between authentic music and sellout music. I'm talking about when I was young, in the sixties? Back then we knew there was a soullessness to the sellouts, and we wanted to be on the side of the artists. But now? Being a sellout is the authentic thing. When Molly Miller says 'I'm just being real,' what she means is that everyone wants money and fame and any artist who claims otherwise is lying. the only fundamental truth is greed, and the only question is who is up front about this. That's the new authenticity. Molly Miler can never be accused of selling out because selling out was her goal all along.”
― Nathan Hill, The Nix

“All aspiring writers say these things: "I will not compromise and write a best seller!"—as if they could! There may be a few totally faked-up books that sell, but on the whole I believe every writer writes as well as he can.”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

“Politics knows no currency.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes. On the one hand, their presence strengthens the regime and helps it endure. But their moral influence may also improve the regime's behavior or save the lives of its enemies. For many, this has been a bargain worth making, even if it has cost them—as it may have cost Seneca—their immortal soul.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“You know the wolf in sheep’s clothing? He is the enticing offer to sell out. But selling out is not success; it is defeat in disguise. Do not be fooled by that hungry wolf.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year

“As far as visual art goes, it has to reveal something about reality that you can't really put into words. Any artist who can explain his work with words is not exactly on the right track. It's tough. You're always probing down in the dark and you reveal things to yourself as you do your art. People who use formulas or use their skill mainly just to make money -- I don't know how they can stand it. It must become very boring, I would think.”
― Robert Crumb

“On credibility: Jack White has just done a song for Coca-Cola. End of. He ceases to be in the club. And he looks like Zorro on doughnuts. He's supposed to be the poster boy for the alternative way of thinking... I'm not having that, that's fucking wrong. Particularly Coca-Cola, it's like doing a fucking gig for McDonald's.”
― Noel Gallagher

“What are you protecting yourself from? Will you sell your life for fear's price?”
― Laurence Galian, 666: Connection with Crowley

“I would love to be a sellout if only someone would ask.”
― Nora Ephron, Heartburn

“I learned this from Robert McKee. A hack, he says, is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn't ask himself what's in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for.
The hack condescends to his audience. He thinks he's superior to them. The truth is, he's scared to death of them or, more accurately, scared of being authentic in front of them, scared of writing what he really feels or believes, what he himself thinks is interesting. He's afraid it won't sell. So he tries to anticipate what the market (a telling word) wants, then gives it to them.
In other words, the hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What's hot, what can I make a deal for?
The hack is like the politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He's a demagogue. He panders.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“I'm not going with you,' I spat at Tamlin. 'And even if I did... You spineless, stupid fool for selling us out to him! Do you know what he wants to do with that Cauldron?'

'Oh, I'm going to do many, many things with it,' the king said.

And the Cauldron appeared again between us.

'Starting now.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“I try to sell myself but I am really laughing,
because I just love the music, not the bling”
― dj white shadow nick monson lady gaga Dino zisis

“You know, Aerosmith will be the thing that kills off your music. Not them directly, mind you. What they represent. Bands are going to sell out. Whatever you think is rebellious now will be used to sell you laxatives in a decade. You'll all get old and conservative. Your Saint Cobain put it well: 'Teenage angst has paid off well. Now I'm bored and old.' It's all about money. You'll get that. You think you are edgy now, but I've seen people like you start to lose their hair and then lose their minds.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Road to Vent Haven