"Artists usually don't make all that much money, and they often keep their artistic hobby despite the money rather than due to it"
About this Quote
Torvalds’ line reads like a dry corrective to a culture that can’t stop turning creativity into a spreadsheet. Coming from the guy most associated with open-source software, it smuggles in a bigger argument: real artistic drive isn’t a market signal. It’s stubbornness. The phrasing is almost deliberately unromantic - “don’t make all that much money,” “artistic hobby” - as if to puncture the myth that talent naturally translates into income, or that income is the cleanest proof of worth.
The subtext is a critique of incentives. If people keep making work “despite the money,” then the standard economic story (people do what pays) is incomplete. Torvalds is pointing at a different engine: compulsion, identity, the need to build, the satisfaction of a solved problem. That resonates with programmer culture, where “art” often means elegant code and where prestige, curiosity, and peer respect can matter more than cash. It’s also an oblique defense of unpaid or underpaid creative labor - not as a moral good, but as an observed reality that exposes how many systems quietly depend on passion to subsidize production.
Calling it a “hobby” is the sharpest move. It downgrades art’s social status just enough to reveal the contradiction: society celebrates artists symbolically while often refusing to pay them materially. Torvalds isn’t romanticizing poverty; he’s naming the bargain: creativity survives because many creators refuse to quit, even when the market shrugs.
The subtext is a critique of incentives. If people keep making work “despite the money,” then the standard economic story (people do what pays) is incomplete. Torvalds is pointing at a different engine: compulsion, identity, the need to build, the satisfaction of a solved problem. That resonates with programmer culture, where “art” often means elegant code and where prestige, curiosity, and peer respect can matter more than cash. It’s also an oblique defense of unpaid or underpaid creative labor - not as a moral good, but as an observed reality that exposes how many systems quietly depend on passion to subsidize production.
Calling it a “hobby” is the sharpest move. It downgrades art’s social status just enough to reveal the contradiction: society celebrates artists symbolically while often refusing to pay them materially. Torvalds isn’t romanticizing poverty; he’s naming the bargain: creativity survives because many creators refuse to quit, even when the market shrugs.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by Linus
Add to List
