The difference between an artist and a politician ... is that an artist, to be true to himself, has to have the courage to be totally uncompromising; and the politician, to be true to himself, has to have the art of compromising at the tip of his fingers; otherwise, he’s not a politician. And therefore, to be an artist in a political society is to go against the mainstream.

- Daniel Barenboim, in Parallels and Paradoxes