Jello Biafra Quotes

I think one of the beauties so far of the so-called Spirit of Seattle is there aren't any leaders, pop stars, or guru figures that everyone else is falling in line with and following. No [Nelson] Mandela, Havel, or Subcomandante Ski Mask riding in on a white horse and everybody else just wanting to follow them to the promised land. We're stitching it together and doing it ourselves.

This is my home. Home is where the disease is. As long as I stay in America, I'll never run out of subjects for songs.

My parents didn't hide reality. I watched cartoons and the news with equal fascination.

No matter what I do, my songs come out in a certain style, and if that sounds like Dead Kennedys, then there's probably a reason for it. Don't forget, I wrote most of those songs, music and lyrics.

I enjoy getting people angry and getting underneath their skin, especially people who don't think.

I am an anarchist in my personal life. I try to live my life in a way that I don't need cops or baby-sitters to keep me from infringing on others. But I don't feel we have evolved far enough as a species to make anarchy work in society itself. We still need government to transfer the wealth from those who have too much to those who have too little, to make sure important projects get done, and keep territorial humans from screwing over and killing each other.

We've never had a situation where mass media has been so censored, at least in my lifetime. When I was younger, networks like NBC, CBS, were independently owned, and took their jobs as journalists seriously. There used to be documentaries like "The Selling of the Pentagon."

Especially in local elections, because hardly anybody pays attention to those - but it's really important who's mayor and who's on the city council, county commissioners, sheriffs, district attorney, and of course the school board.

I was born in the late '50s, was a child of the '60s, then the '70s, then the '80s, then the '90s, and I have mental fingers in all those pies.

If you liked school, you're gonnnnna lovvvvve work!

It's very irresponsible as a parent to follow Tipper Gore or the Religious Right's advice and just take the offending CD or game away from the kid without discussing it.

Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s.

I think there's plenty of room, even in the most serious activist circles, for humor. Humor can be very effective both to inspire, and as a weapon. Just ask Frank Zappa and Charlie Chaplin.

One of the best things that's come out of the Seattle protests is the birth of the Independent Media Center. It's not as though the independent media movement wasn't already there, but it's given it another jump-start. There's the feeling that not only should we report on our underground culture and our own situation, but now we have to start telling people what's really going on at a time when everything from CNN to USA Today is as tightly controlled as Tass or Pravda.

Even the most Bush-happy, flag suckling jack-arse knows deep-down inside that something is wrong. America is over and everyone knows it. The New World Order has a dying empire odor and changing the channel ain't going to make this go away.

I got involved because I wanted to help inspire more people to get off their butts and register and vote - not just in this election, but in every other election from now on, you know?

Method acting has had a major influence both in writing through the eyes of other people, and seeing through the eyes of other people, trying to address different ideas in a way that would go beyond preaching to the choir.

Let me start by saying, I'm utterly disgusted with the former members of the Dead Kennedys.

...balance the budget ? Tax religion.

Looking back, I didn't realize until years later what a huge influence Red Skelton was in my stage demeanor with the band. I mean, I always liked things that were funny, and later I realized that having a sly sense of humor was a way to get attention and even respect in school.

If I get even five per cent of my ideas out and documented before I die, I'll be lucky. I'm not in danger of running out of riffs or ideas anytime soon. They overwhelm me and it's hard to find time to deal with them.

Shut up, be happy. Obey all orders without question. The happiness you have demanded is now mandatory.

The underground scene is still a cool way to meet a lot of cool people, see a lot of interesting bands and get a lot of food for thought, but people have to remain curious and get their brain activity food from other places besides punk.

All of these reissues were not authorized by me, I do not endorse them, the live album was put out without my permission, and I've not seen a dime at this point, either.

From the beginning, there was so much pressure in the early San Francisco punk scene for everyone to be different than everyone else, to flaunt your intelligence and insights instead of every band sounding alike, like what plagues punk music in particular today.

If you love god, burn a church.

You have to be down here in the States to realize just how tightly controlled the corporate media is and how much they practise Soviet-style censorship through creative omission.

When there's people on the other side of the room trying to wipe out your life and things are stacked against you, you can get nervous.

Well, once you get involved with bloodsport litigation, you can not only get drunk on your own greed but start to believe your own lies.

The Sonics I found later and that was pretty important

You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course.

Our biggest national security threat is the environmental destruction of our planet and the arms race with ourselves.

If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.

I'm appalled at how many people my age, or even five or ten years younger, have no tangible memories of important history that happened when we were growing up.

I went through a big Alice Cooper phase, which was probably a major influence on my writing style later, especially after Plastic Surgery Disasters.

I've never been a big fan of subtle art. I like art that gets deep into my head and starts my brain spinning with new ideas and inspiration and my whole body is full of energy.

So basically the understanding on these so-called reissues is that they were done behind my back, without my permission, and the band informed me that I would no longer be paid on them at all.

If I go without rock for too long, I feel depressed.

All my different kinds of artwork have been designed to inspire people to think. They may not always agree with me, but at least they will have some feelings and some passion about whatever it is.

In 1965, my father was just twirling the dial of the radio to find something that would make me go to sleep, and as soon as I heard rock and roll there was no stopping me. It was during the height of Beatlemania and the British invasion, but I gravitated toward the harder, heavier music going on then, you know, the early Rolling Stones, the good Rolling Stones, and Paul Revere and the Raiders, who don't get the credit they deserve for spearheading the American '60s garage sound.

If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.

I never expected the movement against globalization and corporate rule to mushroom as quickly as it has, either. And right now the strongest electoral arm of that movement is the Green Party. I try to stress to people cynical about voting that the Greens are the most effective electoral arm of the so-called Spirit of Seattle, and it's great fun to cause trouble in the streets, but that's not going to accomplish much without insurrection in the voting booth at the same time.

Another part of what gave me a questioning, rabble-rousing, activist heart and soul is that when all these heavy events went down, my parents did not shelter the kids from it.

I think one of the most important things punk brought back was the whole concept of staying independent and doing things yourself. It made music a lot less boring in any category you can name.

I think that what's perceived as punk out in shopping malls or in chain stores or on MTV has almost nothing to do with what punk is about.

I've been to enough other countries in the world to know what happens when you have socialized single-payer health care. It works. People don't get sick as much. They don't lose their life savings with a catastrophic illness like cancer or AIDS.

Hardly anybody in America pays attention to local elections.

That's the way both they and I travel sometimes. Pick road at random, and when it's time to pull over, you pull over and hope you can find a place to crash.