Quotes About Music And Politics

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

Bob Geldof

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

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

Steve Earle

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. 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

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

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

Laurie Penny

#45. 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

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

Michael Franti

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. 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

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

Patrick Carney

#51. [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

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

Ray Palla

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

Bob Geldof

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. 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