Quotes about pop
page 2

Frank Klepacki photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“Just pop it on your wrist. - Ricky asks Karl how his 'invention' of a watch that counts down your life would actually work.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 5
On Technology

RuPaul photo

“The point about pop culture is that so much of it is borrowed. There's very little that's brand new. Instead, creativity today is a kind of shopping process—picking up on and sampling things form the world around you, things you grew up with”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Ryan Castillo in: Syllabus: Communication & Popular Culture http://www.academia.edu/5379627/Syllabus_Communication_and_Popular_Culture, University of Denver

Roy Lichtenstein photo
Anastacia photo

“I'm pop-corn
I'm a hell storm
Yeah, I'm in the hands of faith
I’m so bad words
Now what you heard?”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Dark White Girl
Resurrection (2014)

Morrissey photo
Luke Haines photo
Stephen King photo
Andy Warhol photo
Russell Crowe photo
The Edge photo
Roy Lichtenstein photo
Phil Brooks photo

“So all you people here, despite evidence to the contrary, still choose to support a man that for all intents and purposes can't even support himself? OK, OK, so if you're a Jeff Hardy fan, if you're wearing a Jeff Hardy t-shirt, if you're wearing one of his diabolical little handsleeves, God forbid if you have your face painted, I want to see you stand up right now. I want to hear you make some noise! Go ahead, if you love and support Jeff Hardy, let the world know! (Crowd cheers, stands up.) Cameraman, cameraman get a good shot, get a real good shot at all these people. The truth is ladies and gentlemen, I don't blame you. I don't blame anybody here for supporting Jeff Hardy. The people I blame, are their parents. Or let's be realistic here, I said parents, what I should have said was parent. Because it's obviously a single parent situation, just like the way Jeff Hardy grew up. See you people are so concerned with the relationship with your children failing, just like your marriage did, that you acquiesce to their every whim and their every desire. I hate to tell you, this doesn't make you a good parent, Philadelphia, it makes you an enabler. (Crowd boos. Starts chanting for Hardy.) And the fact that you even let your children look up to a guy like Jeff Hardy, just shows that you really don't care what happens to them to begin with. It's a sad situation. So I don't blame anybody here or sitting at home watching this, that supports Jeff Hardy if they're under 17, because they're young and they're, well, they're impressionable. The real problem lies with the parents, it's the parents who don't make a conscious effort to sit their children down and teach them the proper way to live! (Crowd boos.) You see it starts with a Jeff Hardy t-shirt, next thing you know they're smoking a pack of cigarettes, after that, they're drinking a bottle of beer. Right after that they move on to shots of Jack Daniels, which is a gateway drug for marijuana…(Crowd pops for marijuana.) And the fact that you people sit here and cheer that goes to show that I'm telling the truth! How about some old fashioned street drugs? And before you know it they're digging through Mom's purse because they're addicted, they're addicted to prescription medication. (Crowd cheers, Punk mouths,"That's not cool!" to fans.) All of this can be stopped before it's too late! Parents, all you have to do is talk to your children. Sit them down and show them the way, tell them the words that can save their lives, show them that sometimes it's what you don't do that makes you who you are! For weeks, for weeks I've been saying to people like you, just say no. But today I think we should just say yes. Yes to the future of a straight edge, drug free America! Just say yes to the winner of tonight's match, just say yes, to the World Heavyweight Champion! Thank you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

At Night of Champions 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Ken Ham photo
Danny Tidwell photo

“The ‘Romeo and Juliet’ story, we’re so past that. I have a very deep respect for art, but I also think we have a lot to learn from pop culture. And that is the future. Either you can ignore it and be stuck in the past, or you can learn from it.”

Danny Tidwell (1984) American dancer

In response to critics and ballet fans who say Tidwell "sold-out" by auditioning on So You Think You Can Dance
La Rocco Claudia. "TV Viewers Discover Dance, and the Debate Is Joined" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/arts/dance/21revo.html?ref=dance#, The New York Times, September 21, 2007

Conor Oberst photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Taylor Caldwell photo
Ayn Rand photo
Warren Farrell photo
John Updike photo
Ferenc Puskás photo
Vin Scully photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo
Jimmy Savile photo

“I’ve never done anybody any harm in my entire life. No need to chase girls, I’ve thousands of them on Top of the Pops, thousands on Radio One.”

Jimmy Savile (1926–2011) English DJ, television presenter, media personality and paedophile

Jimmy Savile quoted in: " Savile and the tape that damn the police http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2461443/Jimmy-Savile-tapes-damn-police-The-special-treatment-allowed-DJ-escape-justice.html," in: Daily Mail, 15 October 2013 ; Quotes originate from a secret police interview in 2009 released only after Savile's death.

Gloria Estefan photo
Justina Robson photo
Pauline Kael photo
Lorin Morgan-Richards photo
Mike Oldfield photo

“If it was a horrible thing I was known for, like some horrible pop song, it would annoy me, but it doesn't. I'm proud of it.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

On Tubular Bells
The Telegraph Interview, 10 june 2009

Amelia Earhart photo

“Ours is the commencement of a flying age, and I am happy to have popped into existence at a period so interesting.”

Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American aviation pioneer and author

20 Hrs., 40 Min. https://archive.org/details/20hours40min00amel [borrowable] (1928), p. 180

Thanissaro Bhikkhu photo
Slash (musician) photo
Tim Curry photo
Robert Sheckley photo
James Comey photo
Christopher Titus photo
Joanna MacGregor photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“You build up to it, don't you? You have that bit of a chat, and you go alright? Hows it going?. You get on an' that and then a little baby pops out.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 1 Episode 3
On Sex

Andrew Gelman photo
Andrew Sega photo
Joni Mitchell photo
Russell Brand photo
Helen Reddy photo

“…I don’t think of myself as a pop star. I started out as a jazz singer. And I love having the chance to just jump in and sing songs that touch me or move me.”

Helen Reddy (1941) Australian actress

On her comeback to singing before a live audience with "album cuts"
Freeman interview (September 2012)

Gloria Estefan photo

“I love Gloria Estefan, though -- she is cool. It's always just been about the music with her and they've been really good fun pop songs and really great ballads. And she's still going strong. She's quite classy and true to her Latin roots.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comments by Welsh singer Charlotte Church, BBC online news (September 26, 2005)
2007, 2008

“One day I had the idea of radiation implosion. As in all ideas that have ever popped up in my head, there is no way I can trace the source.”

John Clive Ward (1924–2000) British-Australian nuclear physicist

J. C. Ward, Memoirs of a Theoretical Physicist (Optics Journal, Rochester, 2004).

“Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable.”

Leonard Baskin (1922–2000) American sculptor

Leonard Baskin, Publishers Weekly (5 April 1965).

Theodore Gray photo

“OK, maybe being an international pop star is more exciting than the life of an element collector, but it has its moments.”

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe p. 234

Vivek Wadhwa photo
Thom Yorke photo
Miles Davis photo

“[M]ost of the pop music out today I consider to have become a homogenized product. It gets to the point that so much of what is going on is copying everything else that is out, because there is a businessman that knows what he has just sold millions of records with, and so he keeps trying to get every group that comes in to do it, you know. You know, you approach somebody who is well known as a booker or manager, and the first remark will be, "I love what you do, but you would have to change this to this, and that to that, and this to this, in order for me to be able to sell it." Well, by the time you've changed that, of course, it's like everything else that is out there. And when Prince first started sending me songs, I thought maybe that by the time I had done four arrangements that I would have started getting some sort of a repetitive something or other. I have been extremely surprised to find that each one is as different from the last as the next one is going to be different. Some of them are like little art songs. Some of them have dealt with heavy things like friendship and death. I mean, death of a friend. And yet, some of them are as baudy as…”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT456 (1992, 2006, 2014)

“(Sylvia) You almost never see a real lady popping out of a cake.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 30

Victor Davis Hanson photo

“[O]ur top schools are obsessed with race, class, and gender but apparently not rigorous in cross-examining the fables and pop fads of their students.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The Deflation of the Academic Brand (2018)

L. Ron Hubbard photo

“God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

A letter to his wife Polly (October 1938), quoted in Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987), p. 81.

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“My family was musical on both sides. My father's family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple's double -- she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s in the kitchen for my grandmother. After my dad was a prisoner in Cuba for two years, we moved to Texas, where I was the only Hispanic in the class. I remember hearing "Ferry Cross the Mersey," by Gerry and the Pacemakers, and thinking, "that had bongos and maracas -- that was really a bolero." And the Beathles song, "Till There was You"… also Latin. I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band -- just for fun -- when I 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish. And as you know, we did that and we broke through. But we waited until 1993 to release "Mi Tierra" -- we wanted my fans to be rady for the traditional Cuban music. And then we kept adding: more Cuban influences, more Latin America. And, underneath it all, African drums and rhythm. The concept of "90 Millas" starts with the songs of the '40s. We invited 25 masters of Latin music -- giants on the cutting edge of creativity, musicians who pushed it out to the world, young Cuban artists and Puerto Ricans who are huge -- so we could blend cultures and generations. So it is like coming home, but not exactly to the old Cuba.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.huffingtonpost.com (September 7, 2007)
2007, 2008

Pauline Kael photo

“At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us. They are saying that everyone is brutal, and the heroes must be as brutal as the villains or they turn into fools. There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counterbalance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films — the freedom to analyze their implications. If we don't use this critical freedom, we are implicitly saying that no brutality is too much for us — that only squares and people who believe in censorship are concerned with brutality. Actually, those who believe in censorship are primarily concerned with sex, and they generally worry about violence only when it's eroticized. This means that practically no one raises the issue of the possible cumulative effects of movie brutality. Yet surely, when night after night atrocities are served up to us as entertainment, it's worth some anxiety. We become clockwork oranges if we accept all this pop culture without asking what's in it. How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?”

"Stanley Strangelove" (January 1972) http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0051.html, review of A Clockwork Orange
Deeper into Movies (1973)

Stephen Hillenburg photo
Maddox photo

“Look out pop-culture! Bono has had enough of 'romantic love'.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

The eleven worst songs of 2004 http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=11worst
The Best Page in the Universe

Kalle Lasn photo
Ryū Murakami photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“This isn't Amazon where you can go "I'm not happy with the product" and pop it back in the post. Thats it, you've got it”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Moaning of Life, Karl on Kids

Arthur Koestler photo
Mark Steyn photo
Elfriede Jelinek photo
Siobhan Fahey photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Prince photo

“Pop life
Everybody needs a thrill
Pop life
We all got a space 2 fill
Pop life
Everybody can't be on top
But life it ain't real funky
Unless it's got that pop
Dig it.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Pop Life
Song lyrics, Around the World in a Day (1985)

James Comey photo
Derren Brown photo

“I’m going to teach them some genuine skills that I use, peppered with some spurious pop-psychology and quite a lot of bullshit.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Derren Brown: The Heist (2006)

Gloria Estefan photo
Pliny the Elder photo
Stephen King photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Denise Scott Brown photo
Jim Butcher photo
Stanley Holloway photo
Roy Lichtenstein photo
M.I.A. photo

“Pop Art, Op Art, Flop Art and Slop Art... I fall into the last two categories [her remark, in the mid 1970’s].”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

Quote of Joan Mitchell, in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 78
1975 - 1992

Colleen Fitzpatrick photo
M.I.A. photo
Herman Cain photo
David Dixon Porter photo

“It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled 'His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America'. The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost 'His Excellency' less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War https://ia802604.us.archive.org/9/items/incidentsanecdot00port/incidentsanecdot00port.pdf (1885), p. 274.
1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885)

Marcel Duchamp photo

“.. because his applying paint to it [the sculpture 'Painted Bronze, two painted ale cans', created by the American pré-Pop Art artist Jasper Johns ] was absolutely mechanical or, at least, as close to the printed thing as possible. It was not an act of painting; actually, the printing [or painting? ] was just like printing except it was made by hand by him. That doesn’t add a thing to it.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

it's just the idea of imitating the beer can that is important.
Quote from 'Some late thoughts of Marcel Duchamp', an interview with Jeanne Siegel, p. 21; as quoted in 'The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties' Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 194
posthumous

Emo Philips photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Gerhard Richter photo
M.I.A. photo

“M. I. A.: If he were a pop star, he’d be, like, Prince or something.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Sourced quotes, Interview with Romain Gavras for Interview (2010)

Charles Krauthammer photo

“There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

International Herald Tribune (31 October 1990), as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), edited by Robert Andrews, p. 711
1990s, 1990