Punk Quotes

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

The last true punk band to get a major label contract was The Dickies.

I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.

I just think that playing bass, like punk rock bass with a pick, wasn't meant to be done for 25 years.

We really try not to spend too much time thinking about what we're supposed to be a punk band, or whatever. We do the exact same thing today that we been doing for years and years and years.

I tried to play bass in a punk band once, and it was an absolute disaster. I can’t play anything. I don’t know what it is.

When the punk thing came along and I heard my friends saying, I hate these people with the pins in their ears. I said, Thank God, something got their attention.

I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music.

I always liked the skinny punk girls; I even loved them before punk.

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

I like the authentic punk dance you did there. It's like a child dizzy off lemonade

I come from the home-grown punk ethic, where it doesn't matter if you can't play a note, it's how you communicate.

Punk gave me the strength to think, "Yeah, you can stand up and be counted, and do what you want in life, and not be hoodwinked by it all," in a simple, very general sweeping way.

I've always worn jewellery but for a time it went out of fashion. Like grungy and punk bands didn't wear jewellery because it was stupid.

I was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle.

Punk, I see you as a hypocritical, manipulative waste of skin.

Skating is what got me into punk rock.

I was a punk. I think that's why I'm such a good person now, because I was such a bad guy then.

I hated old people as a young kid who thought he knew anything about punk rock. I just thought old people sucked and I thought their opinions sucked.

Art talk is punk. Let the movie do your speaking for you.

I wanted to sound new and exciting - the punk movement was over with for me.

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

What we get in punk these days are layers of 'anti-', and so many of them are so self-serving. It's not about larger freedom.

There's not much music I'll listen to if it doesn't have pretty heavy swing. Rhythm is so important. Punk rock would have more power and feeling if it had swing.

I hate to say this, but at the time, (late 70's) it was like the smart people liked punk and the dumb people liked Journey.

A punk group is perfect because literally the lead singer doesn't play anything - he just sings and screams and jumps around; his body is his instrument.

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.

Being in love is totally punk rock.

I still think of myself as punk, because the way I became empowered to play music is entirely due to punk bands.

The older I get, the more of an anarchist I become, and I don't mean in a punk rock way.

(Punk rock is) lunging after some glimpse of a new and better world.

If something is visceral and unsettling for me, my job is to not look away, not to punk out. Sometimes the dark things come from places inside me, experiences Ive had, that need to be transformed.

You don't need to be talented. You don't even have to play the guitar to be a guitar player in a punk-rock band. So I, in a very naïve and teenage way, said, "That's it. I'm going to be in a band."

It makes me extremely proud to make punk rock the biggest music in the world right now.

Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like a state of mind.

I still think punk's around. It's been pushed into the mainstream and it gets harder to draw that line between what's pop and what's punk.

Some people started to call me "the King of No" because with Daft Punk we were saying "no" to everything.

When I want something, I want it now, and Daft Punk taught me to be more patient.

When I've met people that work in any walk of life they say, "If it wasn't for punk I wouldn't be doing it this way." I think spiritually, it did change the world a lot.

When I write in the studio, I tend to gravitate toward the ability to play really loud, aggressive, post-punk stuff, with big, heavy guitars and a big rock drum sound.

I never understood why the metal heads in my school hated the punks.

1991 for some people was a significant year in terms of punk rock. It was the year "punk broke".

Punk is just like any other sub culture or music. Straight rock music has those elements. I grew up in a place where the punk rock kids fed the homeless in the town square.

Punk rock, when I was a part of it, was called 'the underground.' There was something very attractive in all the hidden places, the hidden histories.

I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.

He was a punk, she did ballet. What more can I say.

They wouldn't play my records on American radio because I had spiky hair. They said, 'Punk rock doesn't sell advertising, it won't make any money.'

I dropped out of high school and I couldn't go to college 'cause I wasn't smart enough, so I'd resigned myself to loading trucks and playing punk rock on the weekends.

We are simultaneously the most hated, loved, feared and admired nation on this planet. In short, we are Frank Sinatra.

People would be surprised at how much of an electronic dude I am, and I like new wave, post-punk and proto-punk stuff.