Art & Creativity Quote by Ossie Davis

Davis frames art less as decoration than as leverage: something that doesn’t merely express a feeling but produces consequences. The line’s muscle is in its escalation. “Impact” and “affect change” sound like civic language, the vocabulary of organizing and policy, not gallery talk. Then he pivots to the body. Art “can not only move us, it makes us move” takes the passive experience of being emotionally stirred and turns it into physical, collective action. That word “makes” is doing blunt work: art isn’t just persuasive; it’s coercive in the best sense, pressing people toward agency.

The subtext is a rebuttal to the idea that artists should stay in their lane. Coming from Ossie Davis, an actor whose career intertwined with the Black freedom struggle, this isn’t abstract arts advocacy. It’s a defense of cultural work as political work. For Black performers and creators in mid-20th-century America, “art” was often treated as entertainment at best, provocation at worst. Davis insists it’s power either way - and if you’re already being read politically, you might as well wield the instrument deliberately.

There’s also a quiet warning embedded in the praise: power cuts both ways. If any art has force, then the stories a society elevates - who gets centered, who gets caricatured, who gets erased - aren’t neutral choices. Davis’s sentence is a call to take that seriously, and to stop pretending taste is innocent.