Greg Graffin Quotes

#1. Society has to be structured such that there are checks and balances, so that it can't be manipulated, for instance, for the profit of just some multinational company who's going to get rich on trying to legislate the environment.

Greg Graffin

#2. The thread of culture that runs through the entire history of punk is also a dedication to challenging the authoritarian.

Greg Graffin

#3. Bad Religion's tradition has always been to try and provoke people but hopefully lead them to a better sense of who they are and what they stand for. That's supposed to make them feel better.

Greg Graffin

#4. Either harming other people is wrong, in which case God is unnecessary, or harming other people is acceptable, in which case God's admonitions are misguided.

Greg Graffin

#5. A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil ... not the cross.

Greg Graffin

#6. For me, the existence of nonexistence of God is a nonissue.

Greg Graffin

#7. Dont take Portlandia too personally - Its just a stupid TV show

Greg Graffin

#8. Life is never static. Despite catastrophic tragedies, life has persisted in evolving new varieties of unimaginable forms. I find comfort in the narrative of evolutionary history.

Greg Graffin

#9. The vocal arrangements are a big part of the formula for a Bad Religion song - layered harmonies and background vocals. So when I start to describe the elements of Bad Religion's sound, it starts to sound like a Christmas choir.

Greg Graffin

#10. We should enjoy and make the most of life, not because we are in constant fear of what might happen to us in a mythical afterlife, but because we have only one opportunity to live.

Greg Graffin

#11. Bad Religion has never been about criticizing people who are Christian. But we've always been about pointing out the irony and contradictions in Christian theology and the more extreme versions of Christians that seek to challenge modern secularism.

Greg Graffin

#12. I would say there's a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It's written for the common man.

Greg Graffin

#13. I got interested in palaeontology and vertebrate history - sparked by books on human evolution - then vertebrate evolution. Studying with palaeontologists kindled my interest in fieldwork.

Greg Graffin

#14. I call myself a naturalist as opposed to an atheist, but there are different styles. Some people just like to be close to nature. And some people actually worship nature, which is too wishy-washy because - like a lot of religious believers - they don't depend on facts.

Greg Graffin

#15. One of the things that all religions have is a narrative of doomsday. There has to be some kind of overarching fear of the future. If there wasn't, none of the religions could invoke this important thing - that science has no evidence of, by the way - called free will.

Greg Graffin

#16. It's not a random chance that we have Alanis Morissette. She didn't evolve out of a null and void. She came from a former template. She borrowed styles and sounds from a very limited set of other artists.

Greg Graffin

#17. I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious people and who knew more about nature than most of us. These were great naturalists; people I would admire for their knowledge of natural science given the time.

Greg Graffin

#18. Ideologically, the pursuit of science is not that different from the ideology that goes into punk rock. The idea of challenging authority is consistent with what I have been taught as a scientist.

Greg Graffin

#19. Whether you reach a lot of people or have a profound impact on a few people, their memories of you are your afterlife.

Greg Graffin

#20. Whether or not punk is the flavor of the month is not important for us. Bad Religion has been popular through many different climates. When heavy metal was popular, when new wave was popular, Bad Religion was still there underneath the mainstream selling more and more records.

Greg Graffin

#21. At the very least, an understanding of evolution can offer a basis for coming together as rational beings to agree on the answers to difficult question.

Greg Graffin

#22. Almost everyone shuts down when science becomes too technical; you've got to infuse it with entertainment and storytelling to make it effective. From high school on, science is taught in a very dry manner, which isn't as potent.

Greg Graffin

#23. If there is no destiny, there is no design. There's only life and death. My goal is to learn about life by living it, not by trying to figure out a cryptic plan that the Creator had in store for me.

Greg Graffin

#24. The thrill of science is the process. It's a social process. It's a process of collective discovery. It's debate, it's experimentation and it's verification of claims that might be false. It's the greatest foundation for a society.

Greg Graffin

#25. The past is dead, let's focus on tomorrow instead.

Greg Graffin

#26. You can't let your personal disposition be dictated by the world around you.

Greg Graffin

#27. Science is the first expression of punk, because it doesn't advance without challenging authority. It doesn't make progress without tearing down what was there before and building upon the structure.

Greg Graffin

#28. Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science and Bad Religion in a World Without God.

Greg Graffin

#29. You can't take up all the music bins at a CD retail outlet with Spice Girls CDs and leave nothing for the Joan Jett catalogue.

Greg Graffin

#30. PUNK IS: the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions.

Greg Graffin

#31. I don't think workaholic is in the dictionary as an affliction, but it's obviously someone who has a disease, and I don't feel diseased by it. I just think that I enjoy life and life has many offerings. I feel lucky to be able to have a forum to share a lot of these ideas.

Greg Graffin

#32. Our faith should be expressed in working toward a better planet for our children and not the selfish, juvenile hope for a better afterlife for ourselves. I don't think anyone is going to Hell, because it only exists in the minds of people who wish ill will on others.

Greg Graffin

#33. I usually am thinking about my next book the second I put the last dot on the previous one that I turn in.

Greg Graffin

#34. I'm trying to champion the naturalist's worldview and show it's not as heathen as most religious people would make it out to be.

Greg Graffin

#35. I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that.

Greg Graffin

#36. I guess rock stars are role models for the kids who listen to that music. My role models have all been geologists - you know, the guys who are doing fieldwork until they're 70.

Greg Graffin

#37. One of our great thematic traditions in Bad Religion has been to question human nature.

Greg Graffin

#38. The songs are universal enough that in ten years time they should still hold up quite well.

Greg Graffin

#39. When I was a teenager, science meshed with my developing ideals - such as the challenge to authority that was central to punk rock. In science, anyone from any walk of life could make a discovery that would overturn prevailing hypotheses. And that was a cause for celebration among scientists.

Greg Graffin

#40. People are still very uncomfortable with the idea that humans are not specially created species. I believe we are a fantastic species. But we are not created specially. That's very hard for people to accept in their day-to-day routine.

Greg Graffin

#41. Every place has its own punk flavor, but they all borrowed ideas from SoCal. It's still a vibrant scene creeping into every crevasse of youth culture. When you hear grunge, you think of the '90s, but when you hear L.A. punk, it's timeless.

Greg Graffin

#42. I want some fact-based evidence about where we came from. Things we consider mysterious need not be attributed to a deity.

Greg Graffin

#43. There are so many ways to characterize evolutionary success. If one criterion is the number of millions of years that the species persists, we're still just infants. We're way too young of a species to tell if we were a creative fluke or if we have any staying power.

Greg Graffin

#44. As a scientist, of course, we have to believe there is no supernatural. There are only natural entities in the universe. And those are the things that we study as natural scientists.

Greg Graffin

#45. It's been an objective of mine since I started writing songs to include both intellect and energy.

Greg Graffin

#46. We delude ourselves into believing that morality comes from somewhere else, whereas in reality we behave as we've been told to behave.

Greg Graffin

#47. When I create, I feel that I am a participant in the grand pageant of life, a part of the ongoing creative engine of the universe. I don't know if that feeling is enough to replace the solace of religion in the lives of most people, but it is for me.

Greg Graffin

#48. Unfortunately, the average guy on the street believes that studying evolution leads to atheism.

Greg Graffin

#49. From a very early age, I was in tune with pop radio, and most of this listening was done driving. We had an old '67 or '65 Buick LeSabre, and whenever we would drive around, I would actually stick my head right against the speakers in the back and sing along to the music.

Greg Graffin

#50. I wouldn't say there's a need for the Spice Girls, but I'd say there's a place for the Spice Girls. There's certainly a place for them, but you don't promote the Spice Girls at the expense of promoting what I think are good role models for girls. You need to create some kind of equality.

Greg Graffin

#51. I was never raised with the traditional story of creation in religion, and because of that I think I had a lot of questions. And evolution, the evolutionary narrative, helped provide some of that for me.

Greg Graffin

#52. If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It's a gang mentality.

Greg Graffin

#53. I don't bill myself as an atheist but as a naturalist. Naturalism is a belief system. A lot of scientists bristle at that. We all have to believe we can find the truth. Evidence is my guide. I rely on observation, experimentation and verification.

Greg Graffin

#54. People need to understand the basics of evolution if they are going to reject it - otherwise, they are not contributing anything productive to modern society.

Greg Graffin

#55. Naturalism teaches one of the most important things in this world. There is only this life, so live wonderfully and meaningfully.

Greg Graffin

#56. The naturalist worldview is a good way to feel grounded and feel part of something that isn't based on fairy tales. It's based on observable facts in the human and in the biological history of the planet. I think that can be a source for comfort.

Greg Graffin

#57. I view music as entertainment. When I'm on stage, I don't look at that as a platform for sharing ideology. Otherwise I'd be a zealot myself. That's why, when people ask me, 'Do you think you can change the world through your music?' I say, 'I doubt it.'

Greg Graffin

#58. I bill myself as a naturalist because if you say you're a naturalist, it gives people a conversation point to talk about what you actually do believe in, instead of when you say you're an atheist, and it's really just a statement of what you don't believe in.

Greg Graffin

#59. So much of the habitat destruction and pollution is based on the simple principle that we somehow have been given free license over other species to degrade the planet.

Greg Graffin

#60. Bad Religion took a long time to develop into gold-record-status artists. Along the way we learned and applied our knowledge, and Atlantic helped us every step of the way, since 1993.

Greg Graffin

#61. I've known a lot of people who were punkers who went on to get academic degrees. Very few of them, however, continued their active role in the punk community. Most of them hung up their leather jacket when they did so.

Greg Graffin

#62. I think English punk died in '79 or '80. Maybe '82 at the latest. As far as American punk goes, it wasn't the same as English punk. It wasn't a working-class movement that was protesting the conditions under which this class had to work. I don't think American punk ever died.

Greg Graffin

#63. I definitely was attracted to similar things in punk and science. They both depend on a healthy dose of skepticism.

Greg Graffin

#64. Academic scientists aren't generally interested in books for the public. So when one comes out, the authors can't expect much praise from scientists. My goal both as a singer and an instructor is to educate through provocation and entertainment.

Greg Graffin

#65. In the 1970s, we had Carl Sagan, and he was so suave with his turtleneck and his tweed jacket. And he was, you know, he made science look cool. And in punk rock, we haven't had that. We haven't had the Carl Sagan of punk.

Greg Graffin

#66. Let's face it: There are people who are extremists in every corner of society, and whatever flag they're waving is something Bad Religion has stood against.

Greg Graffin

#67. I grew up playing football since the day I could walk; some of my greatest memories of childhood are playing touch football in all kinds of weather with my best friends. That's a part of the American experience that no corporation can destroy.

Greg Graffin

#68. I've always been on a quest to use science in an artful way.

Greg Graffin

#69. I don't mind if other people call me an atheist, but I call myself a naturalist. Atheism doesn't tell you much about what I do believe in; the term naturalist opens up the discussion better.

Greg Graffin

#70. There is no such thing as hell but you can make it if you try

Greg Graffin

#71. The creativity inherent in life is the counterbalance to tragedy. it affirms our belief that life is a good thing and provides a rich potential source of human meaning.

Greg Graffin

#72. I struggled to keep one foot in music and one in academia. I had worked on my Ph.D. for three years full time before I realized Bad Religion could be a legitimate career.

Greg Graffin

#73. I believe in strong legislation for the environment. So the only question is being smart enough and educated enough to scrutinize the people who are writing the legislation, because there are plenty of ulterior motives out there.

Greg Graffin

#74. Science is very vibrant. There are always new observations to be found. And it's all in the interest in challenging the authority that came before you. That's consistent with the punk rock ethos that suggests that you should not take what people say at face value.

Greg Graffin

#75. Unfortunately, science cannot be reduced to short, catchy phrases. And if this is all that the general public can comprehend, it's no wonder that we spend so much of our time in the interminable debate about belief in God, or lack thereof.

Greg Graffin