Music Politics Quotes

#1. We enjoy talking about music, politics, and subjugation. - Kinky Friedman to Night Rider on KOKE-FM

Ray Palla

#2. I met my wife Anne who was a sociology student, and her influence together with activities associated with the student movement of the time opened up my interests amongst other things into the theatre, art, music, politics and philosophy.

Paul Nurse

#3. I suppose I've always been attracted to this sort of outsider in general - in literature, in music, politics, whatever - and to the person that is able to be relentlessly themselves. I don't think that I have that quality, that strength of mind.

Cillian Murphy

#4. My dad and I had a real meeting of the minds. We loved to talk about music, politics, and art. He loved children. The thing I missed most about my dad when he died was that this person who really gets who I am at the core was gone.

Rosanne Cash

#5. Physics, mathematics, music, painting, my politics, my love for you, my work, the star-dust of my body, the spirit that impels it, clocks diurnal, time perpetual, the roll, rough, tender, swamping, liberating, breathing, moving, thinking nature, human nature and the cosmos are patterned together.

Jeanette Winterson

#6. Music is the only industry where you don't need to know what you're doing to get ahead. Well, that and politics.

Gene Simmons

#7. A theatrical spectacle is inherent whenever family members congregate and reacquaint themselves with powerful universal themes educed from homecomings including hugs, food, drink, conversation, politics, games, music, conflict, terror, mercy, smiles, tears, prayers, misfortune, and self-discovery.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#8. No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

Kurt Vonnegut

#9. If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that's such a rare gift. It's underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.

Iggy Pop

#10. Politics has always been in my music. Anybody who doesn't understand how political "Copperhead Road" is isn't listening very well.

Steve Earle

#11. I don't care much about politics. That kind of witchcraft I stay away from because people end up dead. I'd rather die for music.

Cass McCombs

#12. Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.

Alexander Pope

#13. I have chosen to keep my personal life separate from my music, as the two are exclusive from each other, and I want to remain that way. I'll talk music, production, writing songs, touring with anyone but keep religion, politics and world affairs off the table, as my expertise is in songs and music.

Randy Bachman

#14. I think about Marvin Gaye and 'Sexual Healing.' What a radical idea that sex was healing. I learned my politics through that music.

Eve Ensler

#15. Just be glad you don't live in one of those little countries where at this very moment, music is severely restricted, or as it is in Iran, totally illegal.

Frank Zappa

#16. It may be that just as tonality recurs in music and realism in painting, so the idea of liberalism recurs in politics-though each time in a different vein.

Eva Hoffman

#17. It's easy to hate and point out everything that is wrong with the world; it is the hardest and most important work in one's life to free oneself from the bonds of fear and attachment.

Noah Levine

#18. And the waitress is practicing politics

As the businessmen slowly get stoned

Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness

But its better than drinkin' alone

Billy Joel

#19. I really like the reggae concepts like the culture vibe. They speak on everything that's going on, they don't have limits. They speak on politics, they speak on life, they speak on the troubles of poverty, everything. The message, the melodies and the concepts of reggae music are unbelievable.

Sean Kingston

#20. Other nations merely change governments as a lady changes dancing partners: Canada contrives to fall in a dead faint every time the music stops.

Gordon Donaldson

#21. There are more inspirational people in music than there are in politics.

Kinky Friedman

#22. The truth is, going against the internal stream of ignorance is way more rebellious than trying to start some sort of cultural revolution.

Noah Levine

#23. People underestimate the hip-hop audience and the capacity to understand politics when it's part of music.

Michael Franti

#24. This is such music to my ears. James Carville advocating a tax cut to stimulate the economy.

Mary Matalin

#25. I've got a fierce passion for politics but I can't stand the smarmy, hypocritical upper-middle-class dictator nation that prevails and has always prevailed in this country. I'm up for petrol bombers, mate, and fighting in the streets.

Pete Doherty

#26. Opening acts are hard, really hard. There's more politics involved than music, sometimes.

Kaki King

#27. From politics and business to music and food to culture, African-Americans have helped to shape our state's colourful past and its future.

Mary Landrieu

#28. Here are my politics: I love music and painting; a good book is an event for me; I'm going on forty-four. How much time do I have left? Fifteen, twenty, thirty years at most? Very well! I maintain that in thirty years ministers will be a bit shrewder, but just about as honest as they are today.

Stendhal

#29. I often use music as a handle for very emotionally explosive substances: love, sex, God, fear, doubt, politics, the economics of the soul - these are daunting thoughts in the back of my mind that I rarely visit without the safety gloves of song.

Jon Foreman

#30. It's the spirit of Dominicans coming out and the pride that we have in our music and our baseball players. Dominicans love two things: politics and baseball. When we're not talking politics, we're talking baseball.

Jose Peralta

#31. Ray Charles' revolutionary approach to music was also reflected in his politics and his deep and abiding commitment to Martin Luther King and the plight of African-Americans. Ray Charles may not have been on the front lines, but he put his money where his mouth was.

Diane Watson

#32. Where I came from, just nodding and smiling when someone expressed views was the ultimate insult. If people weren't yelling about politics in our house then they were arguing about music, or movies, or food.

Ezekiel Emanuel

#33. Part of my desire to play music was because I wanted to escape the art world and the politics of it; the petty gossip-y art world. But you know, I feel like they're both equal forms of expression.

Kim Gordon

#34. Each culture might lend its own dialect, but above all that is the language of music itself, and it doesn't care about politics or boundaries.

Geoff Zanelli

#35. She now represents the Western United States, thus proving politics is even more accepting of the strange, unusual, and mostly useless than the music industry.

John Zakour

#36. Passion is passion. It's the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn't matter where it's directed ... It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith ... the saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all.

Nicholas Sparks

#37. My life in Hollywood surrounded by celebrities became a point of view for me - sports, fashion, music, film, arts, and politics as a media play.

John Van Hamersveld

#38. Music and politics are in essence about communication. Without over-stretching the analogy I do feel a sense of rhythm is important in getting your message across.

Charles Kennedy

#39. I often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.

Richard M. Nixon

#40. I don't think music should be played anywhere near politics. The two don't go together.

Leon Redbone

#41. I'm not really involved with politics ... I'm living in my cocoon with my classical music around.

Eva Green

#42. There have been times when I've made special arrangements to meet people in music, film, business or politics, and I'll continue to do so if the people are sincere.

Frederick Lenz

#43. As I got older I became a kind of sub cultural junkie, foraging around in music, street fashion and eventually art, politics and the freakier reaches of the Internet, hunting the next discovery, the next seam of underground gold.

Hari Kunzru

#44. What is music in America? It's this stand-in for political action in a lot of senses. We have no democracy and we have no art culture, and we've long considered politics nebbish-y and hopelessly unsexy. So a lot of what would be considered political activism is channeled into cultural work.

Ian Svenonius

#45. In all sorts of markets - music, film, art, and politics - the future of popularity will be harder to predict as the broadcast power of radio and television democratizes and the channels of exposure grow.... The gatekeepers had their day. Now there are simply too many gates to keep.

Derek Thompson

#46. People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the fucking thing. It's all fucking crap. We're all human beings, we're all mammals, we're all rocks, plants, rivers. Fucking borders are just such a pain in the fucking arse.

Shane MacGowan

#47. Politics and music don't necessarily go hand in hand. They just do for me ...

Steve Earle

#48. For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic.

Alexander McCall Smith

#49. The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart.

Noah Levine

#50. Without courage, our generation is doomed to another decade of political disenfranchisement and shit music.

Laurie Penny

#51. I have to study politics and war so that my sons can study mathematics, commerce and agriculture, so their sons can study poetry, painting and music.

John Quincy Adams

#52. I don't really like to infuse music with politics - but I wouldn't say as a general statement that it shouldn't be.

Davey Havok

#53. All the arts, music, the visual arts, acting and dancing arts, cooking arts, and I believe sports, will save the human race because they can leap over barriers, religions, leap over barriers of race, politics.

Pete Seeger

#54. My personal take on politics is I deal with social situations and cultural situations in my music and in my life. I have said on record many times that I haven't voted. I'm not the type of person who says, 'I'm never going to vote.' I think it's clear to me that our system has failed us.

Talib Kweli

#55. Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.

Michael Eric Dyson

#56. My life is about politics, a lot of about music, and a lot about things other than acting. I like traveling the world. But, what makes me want to stay in this business and keep doing this are movies when it's a true labor of love.

Olivia Wilde

#57. Music is the most powerful form of communication in the world. It brings us all together. Even religion separates us, but a hit record unites us across religious beliefs, race, politics.

Sean Combs

#58. I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries.

Pablo Casals

#59. If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.

Keith Richards

#60. I don't do 'black music,' I don't do 'white music' ... I make fight music, for high school kids.

Eminem

#61. If the breaking news story had to do with hard news, politics specifically, I had a lot to do with it. If it had to do with music, Kurt Loder was more involved.

Tabitha Soren

#62. Politics are not my arena. Music is.

Aretha Franklin

#63. My dad's family were political and he was always a theatrical creature, whereas my mum is really musical and her father was the touring pianist with Nat King Cole. My family was an explosive mixture of politics, religion and music - no wonder I turned out how I did.

Grace Jones

#64. I feel like politics have always informed what I do. If you know anything about my music, you know I've never been shy about stating how I vote.

Mary Chapin Carpenter

#65. Rock was different from rock and roll. Rock was virtuosic and adult, as opposed to popsy and teenaged. Rock and roll was apolitical and fun, while rock was "heavy" and often political, creating vistas of psychic energy that carried beyond the music itself and into radical politics and art.

Stephen Davis

#66. I'm Iranian and no matter what I do, I'm dealing with politics because especially my music, that it's a music that talks about peace, love, unity.

Hafez Nazeri

#67. The only candidate I'd allow to play my music would be Bigfoot, and unless we're talking about foraging for squirrels, he's notoriously apolitical.

Greg Gutfeld

#68. Daddy, I don't like military parades. I never want to be like those people who march rank and file to music - they were given brains by mistake.

Corinne Maier

#69. I don't like to talk about things where you're going to gt one side or the other unhappy. My music has no politics.

Loretta Lynn

#70. [The Great Migration] had such an effect on almost every aspect of our lives - from the music that we listen to to the politics of our country to the ways the cities even look and feel.

Isabel Wilkerson

#71. I don't find music being less important than, like, politics.

Kurt Loder

#72. Our current politics tell you that should you fall victim to such an assault and lose your body, it must somehow be your fault. Trayvon Martin's hoodie got him killed. Jordan Davis's loud music did the same.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#73. Politics can be strengthened by music, but music has a potency that defies politics.

Nelson Mandela

#74. Nothing is ever just a piece of music.

Jessica Duchen

#75. The last thing I wanted to do was put politics into my music ... because music was my escape.

Gloria Estefan

#76. Yeah, exactly, you can talk about politics in music, you can talk about something else, but that's always going to change, and love is never going to change.

Enrique Iglesias

#77. But our land is still troubled by men who have to hate. They twist away our freedom, and they twist away our fate. Fear is their weapon, and treason is their cry. We can stop them if we try.

Phil Ochs

#78. Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest.

Eddie Vedder

#79. Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama's running so we all can fly.

Jay-Z

#80. Music is what I must do, business is what I need to do and politics is what I have to do.

Bob Geldof

#81. Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached.

Eric Clapton

#82. Music shouldn't be based around money or politics. Music should be a bunch of people that really do great songs together doing them together for the pursuit of having a good time.

Jerry Only

#83. Just make music; don't talk about politics.

M.I.A.

#84. As soon as you start mixing up politics and some sort of ethical code in music, you've got it all wrong.

Patrick Carney

#85. I was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined.

Bob Geldof

#86. But I don't believe in organised politics, organised religion, organised music, organised anything.

Link Wray

#87. Own what you are, and I mean whether that's art, or whether that's fashion, or whether that's music, or whether that's acting, or whether that's politics, or whether that's literature; it's own what you are, and grab it, and, you know, be as prolific as possible.

Courtney Love

#88. It's important to have a life and spend time outside of those things [music and politics], in order to appreciate what you've achieved as far as just spending time with people you love, and doing things like painting.

Eddie Vedder

#89. When I left politics in the early Eighties and started writing and recording, my idea was that I could have an influence further down into other generations. That Natives could come into the culture through arts and music.

John Trudell

#90. Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearning and confusion.

Tony Snow