Jello Biafra Quotes

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.

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.

For every prohibition you create, you also create an underground.

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

If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve.

Punk is not dead. Punk will only die when corporations can exploit and mass produce it.

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

If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.

Heavy Metal is the most conservative of all loud music. Let's face it, not even a gym teacher could get as many people to dress alike.

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

As a human being with notoriety and a big mouth, I've felt most threatened during the first Bush Administration. Whenever there's a Bush in the White House, many people die, and the rest of us are threatened. I just didn't think it would happen quite so quickly. The so-called USA Patriot Act, and the announcement of trying people in military tribunals if Bush or Rumsfeld's or Ashcroft's people think they somehow qualify as terrorists, basically, this is McCarthyism run amok.

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

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

Don't hate the media, become the media.

If you love god, burn a church.

Punk rock will never die, until something more dangerous replaces it.

A hairstyle's not a lifestyle.

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.

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.

It depends on the situation. I mean, on one hand there's the argument that people should be left alone on the other hand, there's the argument to wade in a stop slaughters in places like Bosnia and Kosovo and what we probably should have done in Rwanda.

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.

I don't think it's too hippie to want to clean up the planet so you don't wind up dying of some kind of cancer when you're 45 years old. It enrages me that these big cancer-research organizations can't be bothered to man the front lines of environmental protest.

Hardly anybody in America pays attention to local elections.

I'm totally down with insurrection in the street. I've had a great time with that over the years. Insurrection in the voting booth is the other part of the equation.

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.

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 saw the Ramones, early on at a country-rock palace in Denver. They were opening for some record-company band, so the local music establishment, and I emphasize the word "establishment," was there in force, and the handful of us who knew the Ramones were up in front. And half the fun was, you know, not only were the Ramones the most powerful band I had ever seen at that point, but they made it look so simple - that anyone could do it, hell, even I could do it. This is what I should be doing.

And we will NOT let Campbell's Soup, Old Navy, or anybody ELSE, HAMMER into the minds of girls as YOUNG as SIX YEARS OLD that they should ALWAYS hate their bodies and ALWAYS be on a diet!

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 think Noam Chomsky is a national treasure - make that an international treasure.

I'm tired of being ruled by the Skull and Bones. The only place they belong are on punk-rock albums!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The boyfriend of the student music teacher came in: "Hey, kids, this is a real Air Force pilot." I asked him something to the effect of how it felt to be dropping bombs on children in Vietnamese villages. And it got very icy in there all of a sudden, and finally the teacher said, "Oh, well, Eric reads a lot of newspapers. Next question."

My attitude is if somebody blunders into the level of popularity; at least remember the human factor. These guys are still human beings and hopefully still have hearts and if you keep in touch with them rather than vilify them you may be able to encourage them to go in the right direction. What I'm hoping will eventually happen is that they will grasp the amount of power and financial clout that is now at their fingertips and use those as tools to help real people with real things the way punk politics was always designed to do before, but nobody had any money.

Well, I don't think I'll ever stop being frustrated or feel fulfilled artistically.

...balance the budget ? Tax religion.

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 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.

Then as I got older, I always gravitated towards the hard stuff, Born To Be Wild, then Black Sabbath

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.

News footage came on the TV during dinner of bloody bodies coming back from battle in Vietnam, or the race riots in the South, people getting hosed in Selma, Alabama, or the Biafra war, where I got my name. In my household, it was explained and discussed with the children, as a way of educating us from when we first started grade school why racism and war were wrong, what this all really means.

What they're not doing is marketing the Dead Kennedys in the spirit of what the band stood for.

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.

There's sort of an open offer to work with a guy in Los Angeles who does big band and orchestra arrangements who was at least an acquaintance to Les Baxter before he passed away.

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 jury had down right contempt for punk rock grass roots ethics.