If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.

I’m putting out this free music, constantly putting it out.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

We can’t allow the world’s worst leaders to blackmail, threaten, hold freedom-loving nations hostage with the world’s worst weapons.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

If tomorrow I want to release a rock album or I want to release a bachata album, nobody can tell me anything – why can’t I?

Music, for me, is vital. Punjabi, Bollywood, Sufi, RnB… I listen to it all. When I’m not listening to music, you will find me chatting with friends. Off the field, I just let my instincts take over. I certainly don’t think about batting, or which bowlers I’m going to face.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

When I did ‚Bird,‘ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

I used to consider the listener. But now I’m in a space where, if I’m not inspired, I can’t really do the music. I can’t feel it.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.

Pretty much my whole life, I’ve been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

All I’m for is the liberty of the individual.

A good song never gets old.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

I don’t live for the accolades. I’m more so about the music. Making it, and putting it out. Those are the two best feelings.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

I’ve always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of – I just sung a lot.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily I should have been in that band – or at least in a Pixies cover band.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he’s up there with Bryan Ferry.

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.

Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. T get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

I used to love Kurt Cobain, when he was telling people we’re a pop band. People would laugh, they thought of it as good old ironic Kurt. But he wasn’t being ironic.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon liberty.

The best road to progress is freedom’s road.

Speaking purely from a musical standpoint, I think I am a great performer.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

I always say, you gotta play a dive bar like you play an arena, and you play an arena like you play a dive bar.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.