Top 60 Joe Strummer Quotes
#1. I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one ... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.
Joe Strummer
#2. If you ain't thinkin' about man and God and law, then you ain't thinkin' about nothin'.
Joe Strummer
#3. If I had five million pounds I'd start a radio station because something needs to be done. It would be nice to turn on the radio and hear something that didn't make you feel like smashing up the kitchen and strangling the cat.
Joe Strummer
#4. The way you get a better world is, you don't put up with substandard anything.
Joe Strummer
#5. In fact, punk rock means exemplary manners to your fellow human beings.
Joe Strummer
#6. Nonsmokers should be banned from buying any product a smoker created.
Joe Strummer
#7. The hippy movement was a failure. All hippies around now just represent complete apathy. There's a million good reasons why the thing failed, OK. But the only thing we've got to live with is that it failed.
Joe Strummer
#8. We sing in English, not mimicking some American rock singer's accent. That's just pretending to be something you ain't.
Joe Strummer
#9. When I started, they told me I only needed 3 chords and the truth ... It turned out I could manage with 2 and some vague ideas.
Joe Strummer
#10. A lot of the time I'm semi-insane, but there is a slight bit of intelligence there.
Joe Strummer
#11. I don't have any other message than don't forget you are alive
Joe Strummer
#12. People can change anything they want to, and that means everything in the world.
Joe Strummer
#14. We did eight gigs in super-stadiums, all the biggest joints - L.A. Coliseum, Oakland Coliseum, Shea Stadium.
Joe Strummer
#16. Yeah, all those things, responsibility, pressure. It's a bit stressful. I try and come to terms with it by not thinking about it.
Joe Strummer
#17. With The Simpsons you can go back to work with a keen heart.
Joe Strummer
#18. When you're out to get the honey you don't go killing all the bees
Joe Strummer
#19. I found that I was just hopeless at school. It was just a total bore. First, I passed in art and English, and then just art. Then I passed out.
Joe Strummer
#21. I only saw my father twice a year. If I'd seen him all the time I'd probably have murdered him by now. He was very strict.
Joe Strummer
#22. Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control and it didn't have any inherent wisdom. I quickly realised that you either became a power or you were crushed
Joe Strummer
#24. All hippies around now just represent complete apathy.
Joe Strummer
#25. The toughest thing is facing yourself. Being honest with yourself, that's much tougher than beating someone up. That's what I call tough.
Joe Strummer
#26. We aren't particularly talented. We try harder!
Joe Strummer
#27. There isn't a town in the world I haven't run amok in.
Joe Strummer
#29. I think we're going to have to forget about the radio and just go back to word of mouth.
Joe Strummer
#30. I just want to go back to rockin', but I'm uncertain as to what to actually do ... The truth is, I never stopped thinking about rock 'n' roll for a second that I'm on holiday.
Joe Strummer
#31. My motto is, 'What's the hurry?' I'm trying to get it across to the modern world that we need to sit around and think a little bit more.
Joe Strummer
#32. What I like about playing America is you can be pretty sure you're not going to get hit with a full can of beer when you're singing and I really enjoy that!
Joe Strummer
#33. Anyway, it's good to be sent back to the underground. There's always a good side to bad things and the good side to this is that at least everyone has to go back down.
Joe Strummer
#34. Greed, it ain't going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people you're nothing
Joe Strummer
#35. You have the right not to be killed, unless it was done by a policeman or an aristocrat.
Joe Strummer
#36. There is nothing more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Joe Strummer
#38. Punk rock isn't something you grow out of Punk rock is an attitude, and the essence of that attitude is 'give us some truth'
Joe Strummer
#39. Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot.
Joe Strummer
#40. I'm far more dangerous now, because I don't care at all.
Joe Strummer
#41. I don't want to look back. I want to keep going forward, I still have something to say to people.
Joe Strummer
#42. It is fun to be alive. It's a hell of a lot better than being dead.
Joe Strummer
#43. I like to read because it's the opposite of being on the go. Reading is the perfect antidote.
Joe Strummer
#44. I have a weird life because I live on songwriting royalties, which are a strange income. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't.
Joe Strummer
#45. I get on all right with my parents. But I don't see them very much. They split up when I was eight. I stayed with my mum, but I felt it was a bit soft with her. I could do whatever I liked, and I wasn't getting nowhere, so I went to stay with my dad.
Joe Strummer
#47. I'm proud of all our records. Even the crap ones.
Joe Strummer
#48. All the power's in the hands of people rich enough to buy it.
Joe Strummer
#49. If you're allowed to make your mistakes, I think you should. But people don't really like hearing you admit them. Although I'd never wanted to dump on the musicians that were involved in that ... Because it was not their fault.
Joe Strummer
#50. For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across.
Joe Strummer
#51. To me, our music is like Jamaican stuff - if they can't hear it, they're not supposed to hear it. It's not for them if they can't understand it.
Joe Strummer
#52. There is a time to dance to techno and a time not to.
Joe Strummer
#53. I want to grow up with my audience. I don't expect to be getting through to the younger pop crowd. I learned that from Paul Simon.
Joe Strummer
#54. And the pebbles fight each other as rocks/And my father bends among them/Two hands outstretching up to me/Not that I can hear.
Joe Strummer
#55. I hate it when I go out and I see parents going, 'don't do that', or 'stop doing that' when some kid's just hanging off a staircase or something. There's too much of this, 'don't do that'. The whole thing baffles me.
Joe Strummer
#56. Everyone has got to realise you can't hold onto the past if you want any future. Each second should lead to the next one.
Joe Strummer
#57. The only place I considered home was the boarding school, in Yorkshire, my parents sent me to.
Joe Strummer
#58. When we played Paris, the English punks would come over, and they got to know the French punks. There was some nice scenes in the back alleys.
Joe Strummer
#59. I like to just feel how I feel and not worry about it really.
Joe Strummer
#60. When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don't learn nothing, cause hey, it's not your fault, it's his fault, over there.
Joe Strummer
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
