Top 100 Thurston Quotes
#1. Did you find your shit? You've got to watch the mota Thurston, your fuckin' memory just goes out the window.
R. John Pritchard
#2. A fantastic Riot Boy, Trash the Senses..
-Thurston Moore
David Rat
#3. I've been into Sonic Youth since junior high school. I think I kind of have ADD, so it's good music for ADD because it just throws you in different directions all the time. I really like Kim Gordon's voice and Thurston Moore's voice, and I like the guitars going off on tangents.
Norman Reedus
#4. I mean, most of it is probably more obscure and just more noisy than either of those two bands, but Thurston has stuff all the time that he's involved with that is fairly obscure and experimental.
Kim Gordon
#5. Arnold Schwarzenegger has hired billionaire Warren Buffett as his senior economic advisor. And not to be outdone Gary Coleman announced his senior economic adviser will be Thurston Howell the Third.
Conan O'Brien
#6. Today, when I think back on the early days and months of Thurston's and my relationship, I wonder whether you can truly love, or be loved back, by someone who hides who they are.
Kim Gordon
#7. I'm kind of quoting Thurston [Moore] and Kim [Gordon] in saying that about not being great with addicts, because they are the ones who said it to me.
Michael Stipe
#8. Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. It is not usually a creation, but a growth, as truly so as is the growth of the trees in the forest.
Robert Henry Thurston
#9. It's American Alternative radio stations that bug me. We're considered Alternative, but don't expect us to be played next to Blink 182 and Offspring. We're hardly of that generation.
Thurston Moore
#10. We're all very sensitive that Jim has the shortest history with the band. He wants to be somewhat of a free agent. I'm just going to let time dictate how Jim's future evolves.
Thurston Moore
#11. There are so many ways to be and to be black at the same time, but we're finally seeing that full range expressed much more widely than before.
Baratunde Thurston
#13. To give! To give without hope of recompense, without question, without fear! That was the message of life.
Katherine Cecil Thurston
#15. People see rock and roll as, as youth culture, and when youth culture becomes monopolised by big business, what are the youth to do? Do you, do you have any idea?
I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture.
Thurston Moore
#16. I was surrounded by nature and trying to come to terms with this blissful nature versus the inhumane mentality of war. People were being deluded by someone using the word peace.
Thurston Moore
#17. Buddhism has become a socially recognized religious philosophy for Americans, whereas it used to be considered an exotic religion.
Thurston Moore
#18. I never go back and listen to the recorded document. The thrill comes when the balance can be attained. Everyone in the room can have a shared, communal rock experience.
Thurston Moore
#19. By the time I got to Harvard, I feel like I knew who I was, and my job there was to throw as much against the wall as possible, to see what would stick.
Baratunde Thurston
#20. No one really gets rich doing this. A couple people do, Black Sabbath does. We don't sell any records anymore.
Thurston Moore
#21. My family life and early political life - being exposed to the news constantly, being enrolled in an Afrocentric education program, and doing the extracurriculars I did - played a huge role in me finding my path.
Baratunde Thurston
#22. College is a safe space where it can be hard to truly fail. The institution is rooting for you because your failure makes them look bad, too. New York City has no such mandate. I've had to hone and sharpen and refine my work here at a pace which may not have happened in other cities.
Baratunde Thurston
#23. Oh, I'm following President Obama on Twitter. I like my black history in 140 characters or less.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#24. It is sacrilege to attempt analysis of birth or love or death. Death and birth, the mysteries! Love, the revelation!
Katherine Cecil Thurston
#25. DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!'
Thurston Moore
#26. I care about the diversity of the mindset of the people creating our future, and the windows through which we see it, and the tools we use to build it.
Baratunde Thurston
#27. Tonight I am going to defecate on stage because I think that is the only way to express the nature of my soul according to rock and roll.
Thurston Moore
#28. The band has a liberal philosophy - that's sort of a given.
Thurston Moore
#29. The Black Friend can prevent misunderstandings from escalating into an all-out conflagration, and all black people benefit from these quiet acts of diplomacy, not just those who serve as Black Friends.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#30. Enthusiasm is ever a gracious, pardonable thing, because in its essentials are youth and zeal and all high, white-hot qualities whose roots strike not in the base earth.
Katherine Cecil Thurston
#32. As I've submerged myself in news of the revolutions sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, I wanted desperately to feel part of what was going on. And then it hit me: This is what white people were doing to me after Obama was elected!
Baratunde Thurston
#33. I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.
Thurston Moore
#34. No first step can be really great; it must of necessity possess more of prophecy than of achievement; nevertheless it is by the first step that a man marks the value, not only of his cause, but of himself.
Katherine Cecil Thurston
#35. New York has been the best gift, in that the city pushes me to so many next levels.
Baratunde Thurston
#36. In 1968, America was a wounded nation. The wounds were moral ones; the Vietnam War and three summers of inner-city riots had inflicted them on the national soul, challenging Americans' belief that they were a uniquely noble and honorable people.
Thurston Clarke
#37. My mind is turning into kind of a fine gelatinous ball of pepper
Thurston Moore
#40. We're like old people now playing music. I'm so glad we stuck it out because it's a lot better. I used to feel kind of anxious. Now our apprenticeship is over.
Thurston Moore
#42. Anyone who grows up with parents who are very influential, there are cases where people run away from that if they have parents who are really lame.
Thurston Moore
#43. It's hard for bands to stick it out because people grow up, and it never really pays off. If you're looking for some sort of payoff, it's not gonna happen.
Thurston Moore
#45. I certainly don't sit around in the morning making pancakes listening to Whitehouse or anything.
Thurston Moore
#47. Lyric writing is an interesting process in Sonic Youth. There's three people writing now, and we've all had a lot of interest and involvement with expression through words.
Thurston Moore
#48. Noise has taken the place of punk rock. People who play noise have no real aspirations to being part of the mainstream culture. Punk has been co-opted, and this subterranean noise music and the avant-garde folk scene have replaced it
Thurston Moore
#49. The saddest human experience is to view alone the scenes one has viewed through other eyes - to walk solitary where one has walked in company - to have its particular barbed shaft aimed at one from every stick and stone that mark familiar ways.
Katherine Cecil Thurston
#50. An eight-mile drive over rain-washed Irish roads in the quick-falling dusk of autumn is an experience trying to the patience, even to the temper, of the average Saxon.
Katherine Cecil Thurston
#51. Math is really about the human mind, about how people can think effectively, and why curiosity is quite a good guide.
William Thurston
#52. Remember something about attention. Yes, it's possible to buy, grab, or even steal it. But it's far better to earn it.
Baratunde Thurston
#54. People ... of the universe! Tonight ... is the night.. when the skies will open, and spray forth a divine hand with pointed finger! And it will say ... everybody ... you're not just a duck ... YOU ARE HUMAN! YOU ARE HUMAAAAN!!!
Thurston Moore
#55. A year's work can be ruined quickly, sometimes within seconds, if roasting isn't done well.
Robert W. Thurston
#56. There's certainly a lot of noise in the hip-hop world now [that] I don't pay active attention to, but to the extent that I represent some flavor of what's happening in hip-hop - it's subconscious.
Baratunde Thurston
#58. Knowing that "me" is inextricably linked to blackness, [I try to enjoy] the process of expanding beyond the expected boundaries set by existing culture, norms and media.
Baratunde Thurston
#59. You don't see what you're seeing until you see it but when you do see it, it lets you see many other things.
William Thurston
#60. The most splendid moment of an adventure is not always the moment of fulfilment, not even the moment of conception, but the moment of first accomplishment, when the adventurer deliberately sets his face toward the new road, knowing that his boats are burned.
Katherine Cecil Thurston
#62. I work in comedy, journalism, media, and technology, many of which don't have a lot of black faces in visible positions. I walk through Brooklyn with a surfboard. It's fun to challenge and expand people's expectations.
Baratunde Thurston
#63. There's no perk in being closed-minded as a minority. It's never, ever, ever going to help you, ever.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#64. As one reads mathematics, one needs to have an active mind, asking questions, forming mental connections between the current topic and other ideas from other contexts, so as to develop a sense of the structure, not just familiarity with a particular tour through the structure.
William Thurston
#68. You can fool the eyes and minds of the audience, but you cannot fool their hearts.
Howard Thurston
#69. The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others.
William Thurston
#70. I don't know that I'm post-anything. I'd like to think maybe I'm post-bullshit.
Baratunde Thurston
#72. A lot of the lyrical ideas do have a lot of meaning in a way, although it is somewhat abstracted.
Thurston Moore
#73. Unlike most politicians who follow their audience, (Robert) Kennedy tried to lead his.
Thurston Clarke
#74. Of all the ills that circumstance forces upon man, separation from a beloved object is, perhaps, the most salutary. Separation is the crucible wherein love undergoes the test absolute; in the fire of loss, grief softens to indifference or hardens to enduring need.
Katherine Cecil Thurston
#75. If there are segregated plates of fruit, I suggest a four-to-one ratio of non-watermelon to watermelon. Look, they know you want it. YOU know you want it. So if you conspicuously avoid it, that's an admission right there: guilt by omission.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#76. We just start putting our ideas out there, yet how do we actually attack contemporary problems? We do what some of the most successful American businesses do. We outsource and collaborate
Baratunde R. Thurston
#77. Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.
Thurston Moore
#79. Throughout this book I will use the terms African-American, black, and Negro interchangeably. There is rarely a logic to it, so please try not to overthink it.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#80. If you chose Option 2 [confrontation], you did well. People will be less likely to engage you in office small talk of any kind, but that's likely a benefit when you consider the fact that every ten minutes of office small talk takes one year off of your life.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#81. If we believe men have any personal rights at all, then they must have an absolute moral right to such a measure of good health as society can provide.
Thurston Clarke
#82. For just as the virtue of wealth will bring out the evil of avarice, so will the evil of poverty bring out the virtue of self-respect. In this world, there is as much good that comes out of evil as ever stands by itself alone. This, in fact, is the need of evil, that out of it may lift the good.
Ernest Temple Thurston
#83. Each member does whatever they want with the song and it totally changes it from whatever idea I hear around it. It turns it into a Sonic Youth song and completely away from it being a solo song.
Thurston Moore
#84. You will be very visible in the company photo, also the website and any other marketing materials. There's no way to avoid it. The photo will only be scheduled when you are in the office, so don't try pretending to be sick. They'll wait for you.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#87. Okay, well, if motion is the constant, how can I remain in motion?
Baratunde Thurston
#88. All other beer is ass, and I will not put in the the work to acquire the taste for things that taste like ass.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#89. I wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was very basic. All I wanted was drums and another guitar, and I was just going to sing.
Thurston Moore
#91. I am not a yogi yet, but I aspire to have more balance in my life.
Baratunde Thurston
#92. We never notate our music, so you can try to replicate it, but you don't really have it.
Thurston Moore
#93. My object is to mystify and entertain. I wouldn't deceive you for the world.
Howard Thurston
#94. I advise you to be suspicious of any black American whose family does not claim a blood connection to Native Americans. That's a clear sign of a racial infiltrator who has not done enough research.
Baratunde R. Thurston
#95. As far as hip-hop is concerned, I'm no expert and rarely think consciously about how I "represent" hip-hop.
Baratunde Thurston
#96. Experience has shown repeatedly that a mathematical theory with a rich internal structure generally turns out to have significant implications for the understanding of the real world, often in ways no one could have envisioned before the theory was developed.
William Thurston
#97. He had used it as the epigram to his 1967 book 'To Seek a Newer World,' and it expressed two pillars of his faith: that everyone has a duty to alleviate suffering, and that no one can live a fully happy life while surrounded by the unaddressed misery of others.
Thurston Clarke
#98. Failure may be cruel, but success is crueller still. The gods are usurers, you know; they lend to mortals, but they exact a desperate interest.
Katherine Cecil Thurston
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