„If you don't vote, you're a moron.“
— Craig Ferguson Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice artist 1962
„If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are.“
On Rock n Roll and political campaigns, in a statement to the Canadian Press (26 August 2005), as quoted in "Rock is on a roll with politics" by Warren Kinsella http://web.archive.org/web/20040913125414/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040912.wkinse0913/BNStory/Front/ in the Globe and Mail (12 September 2004).
Context: I call it treason against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics.... When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick..... If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.
Alice Cooper30
American rock singer, songwriter and musician 1948Related quotes
„Because', she said, 'your problems are not real problems. You're dating two beautiful girls at once. Think about it. That's like… having rock-star problems.'
'Having rock-star problems may be the closest I ever get to being an actual rock star.“
— Cassandra Clare, book City of Fallen Angels
Source: City of Fallen Angels
„You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development.“
— Ernest Hemingway, book The Sun Also Rises
Source: The Sun Also Rises
„There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva“
— Josh Groban American musician and actor 1981
VH1.com, 11/23/03
Context: "The shower is my time to open up my operatic chops, because of the enormous echo. You sound five times as big in the shower, so I break into some "Nessun Dorma" [from Puccini's Turandot] or Pearl Jam. You've got to go big when you're in the shower. There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva."
„The pain is legit. But Trump is a stupid vote. Because Trump won't solve any of those things, he'll make them all worse. You're voting against your pain. You're voting to create more. You're going for a kind of witch doctor of politics who is promising things based on magic.“
— Mike Murphy (political consultant) American political consultant 1962
As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s
„Trump is not your best. He's the worst of all of us. He's a symptom to a problem that is very real. But don't vote for your own cancer. You're better than that.“
— Louis C.K. American comedian and actor 1967
Email to fans quoted by Variety in Louis C.K. Compares Donald Trump to Hitler: ‘He’s an Insane Bigot’ http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/louis-c-k-donald-trump-insane-bigot-dangerous-1201723679/, March 5, 2016.
„On media consideration to be a reluctant rock star: I'm not a reluctant rock star, I am not one at all. I haven't an ounce of rock star in me. […] What I despise about the rock star lifestyle is the lack of music in it. The average day is spent travelling to hotels, giving interviews, being nice to people you're told to be nice to, and maybe if you're lucky you might squeeze a bit of music in. The musician's day is music. […] I am in that unique little club, where I went into music because I love music, not because I wanted to be rich and famous. I've always knocked on the door of the musicians' room, not the rock stars' room. The British press refuses to see the difference between them, mainly because of the capers of people like Phil Collins, a musician who behaves like a rock star. But there are people who love music and have no interest in being a rock star at all.“
— Chris Rea English singer-songwriter 1951
John Henry Walsh (1997 May 2) " The reluctant rocker https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-reluctant-rocker-1259348.html" by The Independent
1997
„You're working in freezing water up to your waist for hours at a time. You're reaching down, moving rocks, bringing in the rock and the gravel and working it all the time, with your hands, with the shovels. Moving always this debris, to get rid of the debris, to pull out the little tiny samples of your future, the little tiny pieces that are going to make everything possible for you. Going to buy you the means to get rid of your mortgage, that are going to make it possible to buy some more land in Iowa, in order to move, and then pack up and go to some new place. All of that is built into every effort you're making, every single day.“
— J. S. Holliday American historian 1924 - 2006
About gold mining
The West (1996)
„The American male runs half of the global world and grows up on rock music from day one. If you can alter the psyche of someone who's growing up to be a rapist or a total misogynist, you're creating values and instead of making the void bigger, you're making it smaller.“
— Courtney Love American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist 1964
On her goals in songwriting, The Guardian (December 11, 1991)
1991–1995
„You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi.“
— Humphrey Bogart American actor 1899 - 1957
Attributed without citation in Vivian Cook, " Can they spell your name in Karachi? British and American style spelling http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Shorts/KarachiAmBrit.htm"
„Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star act. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs.“
— Henry Rollins, book Black Coffee Blues
Black Coffee Blues
„In order to have a couple of shamans on hand in your group, you're willing to put up with the occasional third cousin who's schizophrenic.“
— Robert M. Sapolsky American endocrinologist 1957
Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: In the 1930s an anthropologist named Paul Radin first described it as "shamans being half mad," shamans being "healed madmen." This fits exactly. It's the shamans who are moving separate from everyone else, living alone, who talk with the dead, who speak in tongues, who go out with the full moon and turn into a hyena overnight, and that sort of stuff. It's the shamans who have all this metamagical thinking. When you look at traditional human society, they all have shamans. What's very clear, though, is they all have a limit on the number of shamans. That is this classic sort of balanced selection of evolution. There is a need for this subtype — but not too many.
The critical thing with schizotypal shamanism is, it is not uncontrolled the way it is in the schizophrenic. This is not somebody babbling in tongues all the time in the middle of the hunt. This is someone babbling during the right ceremony. This is not somebody hearing voices all the time, this is somebody hearing voices only at the right point. It's a milder, more controlled version.
Shamans are not evolutionarily unfit. Shamans are not leaving fewer copies of their genes. These are some of the most powerful, honored members of society. This is where the selection is coming from. … In order to have a couple of shamans on hand in your group, you're willing to put up with the occasional third cousin who's schizophrenic.
„At twenty you know you're not going to be a rock star… by twenty-five you know you're not going to be a dentist or a professional… by thirty, a darkness starts moving in - you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful… by thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing the rest of your life; you become resigned to your fate.“
— Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma
Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
„If you hear yourself saying “I could never give up ice cream” (or something else), realize that you may just be short on vegucation. There are lots of rich, luscious nondairy ice creams on the market … If you have the necessary information and you're still saying “I could never give up…,” listen to yourself. You're affirming weakness. … You're bigger than that. You can eat plants and save lives. You can give your life exponentially more meaning by living in a way that decreases suffering just because you got up and chose a kind breakfast.“
— Victoria Moran American writer 1950
Source: The Good Karma Diet (2015), Ch. 2: The Good Karma Diet
„So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment.“
— Beverly Sills opera soprano 1929 - 2007
As quoted in Newsweek, Vol. 103, (1984), p. iv
„God gave me a soul / And your rock 'n' roll
In and out my brain / And running through my vein / You're my sunshine / You're my rain“
— Noel Gallagher British musician 1967
The Hindu Times
Heathen Chemistry (2002)
„If you're squeezed for information,
that's when you've got to play it dumb:
You just say you're out there waiting
for the miracle to come.“
— Leonard Cohen Canadian poet and singer-songwriter 1934 - 2016
"Waiting for the Miracle" (co-written with Sharon Robinson)
The Future (1992)
„So you're a little bit older and a lot less bolder
Than you used to be.
So you used to shake 'em down,
But now you stop and think about your dignity.
So now sweet sixteen's turned thirty-one,
You get to feelin' weary when the work days done.
Well all you got to do is get up and into your kicks.
If you're in a fix.
Come back baby,
Rock and roll never forgets.“
— Bob Seger American singer-songwriter 1945
Rock and Roll Never Forgets.
Song lyrics, Night Moves (1976)