Top 100 John Lydon Quotes
#1. I've turned arrogance into an artform, where it's so absurd that it becomes comedy. But I've never done anything to hurt anybody or steal from anyone.
John Lydon
#2. Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!
John Lydon
#3. If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of these competitions.
John Lydon
#4. A record company used to be a very good thing, but they ended up soul-destroyingly trapping people in the accounting department. And you couldn't get any further, and the heads of each department were changing all the time, so you couldn't have any permanent relationship within the corporation.
John Lydon
#5. When I write, my brain moves faster than my hands so I'm always trying to picture things.
John Lydon
#6. Love is two minutes and fifty-two seconds of squishy sounds.
John Lydon
#7. I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.
John Lydon
#8. I'm very open about my politics. I don't believe in any political party at all, none of them.
John Lydon
#9. I don't believe in anarchy, because it will ultimately amount to the power of the bully, with weapons. Gandhi is my life's inspiration: passive resistance. I don't want to live in the Thunderdome with Mad Max.
John Lydon
#10. I don't have huge bank accounts. I'd love one. But it wouldn't change much. I don't have any expensive habits. I'm not a car collector or any of that nonsense. But I'd love to be incredibly wealthy for no reason at all.
John Lydon
#11. Being born into the Royal Family is like being born into a mental asylum. Marrying into it is not something to be taken lightly.
John Lydon
#12. Michael Jackson plays the wounded puppy very well. 'I must be the loneliest man in the world'. Well, you're not a man. And the loneliness is self inflicted, so sod off you pathetic puerile pimp. I wonder what color his willy is.
John Lydon
#13. I never wore a studded leather jacket, y'know. Ne-va!
John Lydon
#14. It's nice to be irritated. It's a very joyous thing.
John Lydon
#15. Books are like my one and only joy.
John Lydon
#16. Oscar Wilde turned the world upside down and was able to laugh at it, and hopefully by the time I'm 120 and worn out, that's what I will achieve. I love being alive so much.
John Lydon
#17. Any kind of history you read is basically the winning side telling you the others were bad.
John Lydon
#18. When you talk like an asshole and look like an asshole, you're an asshole
John Lydon
#20. I never take any commitment lightly, and I certainly don't take my wife lightly. I never did and I never will. That's permanent. That's true love.
John Lydon
#21. For me, the best rock is not what you play - it's what you're not playing.
John Lydon
#22. Analog, electronic, whatever it happens to be, I simply love and adore literally every aspect of making music.
John Lydon
#23. I like America's diversity and its landscapes.
John Lydon
#24. My biggest fear is mindlessly and stupidly repeating myself.
John Lydon
#25. I'm no one's lap dog, you can't put me on a leash.
John Lydon
#26. I don't believe in pets. I like animals to be wild and free.
John Lydon
#27. The record companies fell apart - quite deservedly. Their corrupting, all-binding contract nonsense had to stop.
John Lydon
#28. I could never be a member of a single party. I want the best of all worlds, thank you.
John Lydon
#29. I don't need a Rolls Royce, I don't need a house in the country, I don't want to have to live in France. I don't have any rock and roll heroes; they're all useless. The Stones and The Who don't mean anything anymore; they're established. The Stones are more of a business than a band
John Lydon
#30. There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.
John Lydon
#31. As a young concert-going person, I was never enamoured with celebrities who would walk out to feature in certain songs and then walk off.
John Lydon
#32. People think I hate the Royal Family, but that's not true.
John Lydon
#33. I had an Irish Catholic education. Horrible nuns, vindictive and cruel.
John Lydon
#34. You'd have to be daft as a brush to say you didn't like Pink Floyd.
John Lydon
#35. If dolphins are so intelligent, how come they ain't got Walkmans?
John Lydon
#36. I think I have something valid to say. My words are my bullets. I like to brag that somehow I got it right.
John Lydon
#37. You'll find that empty vessels make the most sound.
John Lydon
#38. The real color of my hair is mouse. I always want to be ginger, which I was when I was born, or blond, because I live in L.A., and I want to look like I go surfing without any physical effort.
John Lydon
#39. You gotta bear in mind, the youth - and this is just in Britain alone - have nowhere to go in the evenings. They've closed all the social centers. There's not even a patch of grass to kick a ball on.
John Lydon
#40. Disco sucks? You never heard that from me.
John Lydon
#41. I'm 100% proud of the TV work I achieved. The work I did on shows on insects and Great White sharks ... stuff that's in school curriculums in England. Now they are showing up on Discovery Channel.
John Lydon
#42. Words cannot express quite a lot of feelings, whereas a noise or tone or drone or sound, an accordion falling down a staircase, can somehow capture an emotion much better.
John Lydon
#43. Sometimes the most positive thing you can be in a boring society is absolutely negative.
John Lydon
#44. For a gun-toting nation, Americans are surprisingly passive.
John Lydon
#45. Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated.
John Lydon
#46. I'm not here for your amusement. You're here for mine.
John Lydon
#47. I have one major problem with the Internet: It's full of liars.
John Lydon
#48. Do what I want, be honest to myself and then it would do good for others, that's all, full on.
John Lydon
#49. Remaining childish is a tremendous state of innocence.
John Lydon
#50. I love discordancy. It makes people ill at ease and wakes up a part of their brain that's normally asleep.
John Lydon
#51. I love being alive so much. When you come out of comas in your childhood, every moment awake is a joyous occasion.
John Lydon
#52. When you grew up like me and my four brothers, you end up feeling somewhat inadequate, like somehow you don't count.
John Lydon
#53. I could take on England, but I couldn't take on one heroin user.
John Lydon
#54. Me, as a human, I never want to take away another human being's choices or lifestyles or anything.
John Lydon
#55. I've been asked over the years to compile a list of desert-island discs. I couldn't do that. If I was trapped on a desert island, I don't think I'd want 10 songs to bring with me.
John Lydon
#56. Love is two minutes fifty-two seconds of squishing noises. It shows your mind isn't clicking right.
John Lydon
#57. I'm in England so often I haven't really left, but Americans aren't at all like they're misrepresented through their politicians.
John Lydon
#58. Listen, you know this: If there's not a rebellious youth culture, there's no culture at all. It's absolutely essential. It is the future. This is what we're supposed to do as a species, is advance ideas.
John Lydon
#59. We need wealthy dogs off the seats of power. They're taking us back to feudalism and I really don't want that. But I'm very far from being a socialist.
John Lydon
#60. I don't tolerate liars. When somebody lies to me, that's really, like, just unbearable.
John Lydon
#61. It's no good being nice and young and naive. There's no good in that at all. You've got to do it all yourself, and you've gotta learn quick. And you can't look for sympathy either.
John Lydon
#62. I applaud the effort it takes to put a record together.
John Lydon
#63. Pop music I have always loved best.
John Lydon
#64. I'm not going to pontificate and tell you to execute your government at dawn, but it wouldn't be a bad idea.
John Lydon
#65. Let's face it, I ain't ever gonna be the best singer in the world, or the best anything.
John Lydon
#66. I like crazy people, especially those who don't see the risk.
John Lydon
#67. I don't believe in false memories, like I don't believe in false songs.
John Lydon
#68. Britain's an island; it's always had a constant ebb and flow of immigration - it makes it a better place.
John Lydon
#69. I keep falling off the edge of the stage because I can't see it. I can't see my wrinkles in the mirror either, though.
John Lydon
#70. Rules are important, but they're temporary and they're always supposed to be changed.
John Lydon
#71. You need the past as a guideline. The history of music is a good basis, but to escape that stuff, that tortuous rulebook, you have to learn it first. It's kind of like religion - once you've written the Bible, that's it, move on.
John Lydon
#72. I love books, and all the best ones are people analysing their own emotions. You can learn from that.
John Lydon
#73. It's nice to be a part of history but people should get it right. I may not be perfect, but I'm bloody close.
John Lydon
#74. U2 - that's a band that never should have existed. There's no life experience in any of their songs.
John Lydon
#75. Maybe I'm a prehistoric monster by being an individual. It's highly likely. All I offer to others is their own individuality. Grab it!
John Lydon
#76. I'm just permanently agitated by everything and everyone.
John Lydon
#77. What do you have to do to get people to take an interest? I'm not going to go out and cause a silly sex scandal just to sell a record!
John Lydon
#78. When you come from desperate poverty, and that's exactly what I come from, you know that nonsenses are not to be tolerated. I'm not sure who gains from chaos, but I know it's not the poor folks in the council flats. The politics of vindictiveness is never, ever anything like a solution.
John Lydon
#79. I've been in very many situations where I've not liked the other members of the band or they have not liked me. I grew up presuming that's the way music was made. It doesn't need to be that way. It's taken me years years to find that out.
John Lydon
#80. I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die ...
John Lydon
#81. I do use my music to entertain myself, as indeed I use other people's music.
John Lydon
#82. It's volatile, the marriage. Which one isn't? Nothing better than a good, full-on row. Get it all out. Say rude and nasty things. And then be sorry. Genuinely sorry, afterwards.
John Lydon
#83. You're made to feel ugly, and I made ugly beautiful. Just by sheer persistence. Nobody has the right to say that I am ugly, and I will not be a professional victim, you know. Sorry!
John Lydon
#84. I'm aware of my songs. I'm aware of them because they're about true emotions, true feelings, things that matter.
John Lydon
#85. I never thought of Green Day as a punk band. Just bubblegum, really.
John Lydon
#86. I'd rather give up my ears than my eyes, which might sound unusual for a musician.
John Lydon
#87. Music can describe emotions far more accurately than words ever can. As soon as I realised that, I knew music was where I wanted to be.
John Lydon
#88. The idea of hearing, 'Great gig, man,' one more time just turns my stomach over.
John Lydon
#89. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
John Lydon
#90. People don't like other poor people, and rather than blame the people that make you all poor, you blame each other.
John Lydon
#91. I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song.
John Lydon
#92. And then you've got a media ready to package that, because it takes away from the political content of them songs. Suddenly there's not a real serious social message, there's just a drug addict. I
John Lydon
#93. You have moments of grief in life, and if you can put pen to paper and capture that, that's something wonderful. I can revisit actual songs about past deaths, and I know that emotion is as true now as it was then.
John Lydon
#94. If you are pissing people off, you know you are doing something right
John Lydon
#95. Some visualize the Pistols era in shades of black and white. It wasn't. Actually, the colors I envision are neon or army dirt green with fluorescent pink
anything that would annoy.
John Lydon
#97. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to.
John Lydon
#98. No matter what you experience in life, it incorporates political tendencies, and in so many ways.
John Lydon
#99. [Replying to the question of the presenter: "where did the name "Sex Pistols" come from, who thought this name up?"] Some animal. I can't remember. It doesn't matter. It's history.
John Lydon
#100. Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything.
John Lydon
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