Selling Out Quotes

“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

“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

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

“[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

“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

“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 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

“It's probably for the best that Van Gogh isn't around to see his work selling for squillions of dollars, as he'd probably start painting for that market. He may have lost an ear, but he'd still have that magic eye and a new nose for a deal. We're denied access to this poor man's genius by having the richest people on earth hanging his life's work in their mansions.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Losers"
Losers are closer to my heart, because they were right...

Because integrity doesn’t win the way it does in shallow Hollywood scripts. Integrity always loses— too many fear it, too many sell out, and too many find its demands too heavy to carry.

I love losers because they were right.

I, too, once placed my bet on humanity— and I lost.”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]

“The Devil didn't pull a trick. He didn't hide. He just put on a Brooks Brothers suit and convinced a generation of poets and fuck-ups that dental benefits were a fair trade for their balls.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“To hell with the pension. To hell with the dental plan. The only currency that matters is freedom, and the exchange rate is fucking terrible.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I don't know how to want something without turning it into a violence against myself.

I don’t know how to like things. I only know how to obsess until I ruin them or ruin me.

I see something beautiful—a woman, a dream, a moment of silence—and I don't just reach for it. I set myself on fire to see if the light will attract it.

I turn every ambition into an ulcer and every love affair into a car crash, just because I don't believe I’m allowed to have the thing unless I destroy myself to get it.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Here’s a spoiler alert: The 65-year-old version of you? Not that much fun.”

You are saving your joy for 65? Work now, live later. Bullsh*t.That’s a bad bet.You’re banking on a body that might not work and a world that might not exist.

You’re pushing all your chips to the end of the table, saving the best wine for a party nobody’s gonna show up to.

The world might blow up tomorrow So Eat that fruit, drink that rum, and kiss that girl tonight?

Coz Tonight you still look good.

LIVE, DAMN YOU!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Potential is just a nice word for 'hasn't done sh*t yet.'

Stop romanticizing to your own potential.

The world doesn't pay you for what you could do. It pays you for what you f*cking did.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”