Mick Jagger Quotes

He stole my music but he gave me my name.

Too much is never enough.

I suppose you do think about the time that's allotted to you more than when you were younger. The mortality thing obviously has a stronger pull for you. It's an imminent truth; it's not necessarily a bad thing. You realize - much earlier than my age now - that you won't be able to play for England's football team, just to take a really crass example. So you can't have that life again. Unless you believe in reincarnation or whatever. Reincarnation? That's a whole other question. I find people who talk about that sort of thing in interviews idiotic. And I don't want to go down with them.

The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness.

People get very thoughtful when they are in cars. I no longer care for cars. I don't collect them.

I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered, and you just must let your imagination run.

When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can't force them to like it.

The Beatles were so big that it's hard for people not alive at the time to realize just how big they were.

I used to play Saturday night shows with different little groups. If I could get a show, I would do it. I used to do mad things - I used to go and do these shows and go on my knees and roll on the ground - when I was 15,16 years old. And my parents were extremely disapproving of it all. Because it was just not done. This was for very low-class people, remember. Rock & roll singers weren't educated people

You have to sing every day so you can build up to being, you know, Amazingly Brilliant

It's not selling out, it is called making lots of money.

I am conservative with a small 'c.' It's possible to be conservative in fiscal policy, and tolerant on moral issues or questions of freedom of expression.

My father was furious with me, absolutely furious. I'm sure he wouldn't have been so mad if I'd have volunteered to join the army. Anything but this. He couldn't believe it. I agree with him: It wasn't a viable career opportunity.

You know, being in a rock band, you can't overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That's not rock. Rock's about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.

People don't bother to check with anything anymore. They just like to speculate in print. We like fact-checking!

Americans are funny people: first you shock them, then they put you in a museum.

The terrible attack in Manhattan has given place to a burst of patriotism in the United States.

As long as my face is on page one, I don't care what they say about me on page seventeen.

Don’t take life too seriously and always remember: it is just a passing fad.

Music should elevate you. You can be raised, or left stranded. You can't be raised all the time, in my experience. This might be a rare moment. You might just go up to that level but that's always good.

Either we stay at home and become pillars of the community or we go out and tour. We couldn't really find any communities that still needed pillars.

The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early '60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and dress.

I have to get up the fitness level, sing a lot, practice, get in the mood, and generally do lots of rehearsal. Get your body and mind ready.

Many Americans have no idea of what has been the foreign policy of their country. If you don't know about something, you can't understand what is going on.

People are so brainwashed by the rules that they don't know what really matters.

I'm interested in feedback and learning what people want. It's a tricky thing for me when I do a set list. You get bored doing the same songs. Let's say we do one ballad in two hours, and it's "Wild Horses." If you say, I'm tired of that, let's try something less well known, and then you're out there stumbling through this song you just relearned at sound check, and you realize people probably want "Wild Horses" instead of this. You do need to do some songs that aren't so well known. The question is how many? I'm open to people posting their requests.

Boys, as far as England was concerned, were always the hard core. And you just know the guys like it. They want to be you. Some might be attracted to you without knowing it.

I am pleased the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of expatriate bankers and their girlfriends.

No matter what Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious do, they can't be more disgusting than The Rolling Stones are in an orgy of biting.

It's hard to believe that you did so many drugs for so long. That's what I find really hard. And didn't really consider it. It was eating and drinking and taking drugs and having sex. It was just part of life.

In England you're skewered on the altar of pop culture if you become pretentious.

Of course we're doing it for the money. We've always done it for the money.

Well, don't we all feel like jumping to the end of the world sometimes?

Killing for ideas is the most dangerous form of killing at all. Being willing to die for your ideas rather than your country is another concept, but dying for an idea, like in religion, is absurd.

Everyone knows what their roots are, but you've got to explore everywhere. You've got to explore the sky too.

I believe we should encourage children to sing and play instruments from an early age.

You can't be jealous and be a leader.

I think, like most people, my moral values tend to be pretty fuzzy.

In England they always try out new mobile phones in Isle of Man. They've got a captive society. So I said, you should try the legalization of all drugs on the Isle of Man and see what happens.

Patriotism is an instant reaction that fades away when the war starts.

Country music... doesn't bend notes in the same way, so I suppose it's very English, really. Even though it's been very Americanized, it feels very close to me, to my roots, so to speak.

I'm very ambivalent in my feelings about marriage. I think it promises a lot to people... sort of like saying, once you get married you are on the highway to heaven, and quite often it isn't that. I think marriage has always been based on a combination of religious and legal reasons.

We have recorded songs on the same day that were released years later in other albums.