Quotes about rock
page 6

Helen Reddy photo
William Saroyan photo
Donald Barthelme photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

In response to Hannah More wondering why Milton could write Paradise Lost but only poor sonnets. June 13, 1784, p. 542
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley photo
Wendell Berry photo
Ashley Tisdale photo

“I'm actually recording my second album now…. so I've just been recording and co-writing. The single should be coming out soon, but I feel it's pretty much 80 percent done. And, yeah, I'm excited about it. It's a lot more rock and edgier..”

Ashley Tisdale (1985) American actress, singer

'High School Musical' Star Ashley Tisdale Aiming For Music-Biz Success http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1597788/20081023/story.jhtml. MTV. October 24 2008. Retrieved February 26 2009.
Tisdale on her untitled new album.(2008)

John Howe (illustrator) photo
Daniel De Leon photo
Ryan Adams photo
Kate Bush photo

“I think about us diving
Diving off a rock, into another moment…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Source: Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)

Ray Comfort photo
Jeffrey Tucker photo

““Eleanor Rigby” is typical of rocks degeneracy, even if the corruption is more buried here than in later efforts.””

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Powerful Song, Man" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, August 1997, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1997aug-00009,

Algernon Charles Swinburne photo

“The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain;
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

A forsaken Garden.
Undated

“Wop boys rock my world
I like to play with all my girls
But money makes me hard and tight
I love to bathe in cash and pearls”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

"Roller Coaster"
Song lyrics, Pretty Mess (2009)

“Most people don’t listen to classical music at all, but to rock-and-roll or hillbilly songs or some album named Music To Listen To Music By…”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, p. 12
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Prince photo
David Orrell photo

“The race to the moon was never really about the moon - its utility didn't rest in samples of moon rock. It was about capitalism versus communism, right versus left.”

David Orrell (1962) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Other Side Of The Coin (2008), Chapter 4, Right Versus Left, p. 116

Marilyn Manson photo
Kate Bush photo
Francis Escudero photo

“I think it is time for us to ensconce him in the rocking chair up there that we reserve for senior members of the chamber.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2013, Speech: Nomination of Senator Ralph Recto as Senate Pro Tempore

David Spade photo
D. V. Gundappa photo
Gary Johnson photo
Alex Salmond photo

“Coming to the period following Islamic invasions, Hindu society did not bother to remember the Arabs, the Ghaznavids, the Ghurids, the Mamluks, the Khaljis, the Tughlaqs, the Sayyads, the Lodis, and the Mughals. But it took pride in Bapa Raval who had humbled the Arabs; in Maharani Nayakidevi of Gujarat and Prithivi Raj Chauhan who had defeated Muhammad Ghuri again and again; in Gora and Badal who had rescued Rana Ratan Singh from the camp of Alauddin Khalji and then laid down their lives in defence of Padmini and her Chittor; in Harihara and Bukka who had founded the Vijayanagar Empire which stood like a rock against Islamic imperialism for more than two centuries; in Rana Sangram Singh who had crossed swords with Babur; in Maharana Pratap who had defied the mightiest Mughal in the midst of great adversity; in Durgadas Rathor who had despised the wrath of Aurangzeb in defence of his right to give refuge to a rebellious Mughal prince; in Chhatrapati Shivaji who devised a new diplomacy and innovated a new art of warfare which finally worsted the most powerful Muslim empire and rolled back the Islamic invasion; in Chhatrasal Bundela and Maharaja Surajmal who revived Hindu rule in the north; in Banda Bairagi who avenged the wrongs done by Muslim despots to Guru Arjun Deva, Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh; and in Maharaja Ranjit Singh who liberated the Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province from Islamic stranglehold.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Philip Larkin photo

“What was the rock my gliding childhood struck, / And what bright unreal path has led me here?”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Lines from an early poem, letter to J.B. Sutton, 16 April 1941

Lord Dunsany photo
Poul Anderson photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“Hereupon Juno and Pallas leap sheer down from the sky upon the rocks; this one the daughter of Jove, that one his spouse constrains.”
Hic Iuno praecepsque ex aethere Pallas insiliunt pariter scopulos: hunc nata coercet, hunc coniunx Iovis.

Source: Argonautica, Book IV, Lines 682–684

Robert Southey photo
Herman Cain photo
William Morley Punshon photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Agnes Repplier photo
Moby photo

“I got a phone call from Ricky Martin's management asking me if I'd like to do something with him in Florida around the winter music conference. My answer is as follows: 'I would consider doing something with Ricky Martin if and only if he publicly apologizes for performing at George W's inauguration and if he confirms that when he danced next to George W. Bush at the inauguration he could smell brimstone and that George W. Bush is in fact the spawn of Satan. So if Ricky Martin goes on national television to confirm that George W. is the spawn of Satan then I will perform with him. Otherwise no deal. And only if we can do a cover of 'In a Gadda-da-vida', but The Simpsons version, 'In the garden of Eden' (to which reverend Lovejoy responds ""that sounds like rock and or roll""). And, by the way, I'm a pretty easygoing young-ish person, so if you ever see me walking down the street just stop me and say hello. We're all in the same boat, right? of course you'll have to make it past my phalanx of security guards who are all ex-NFL linebackers, and the cadre of dobermans, and the perma-moat that I wear that's filled with electric eels and vicious sea monkeys. So if you see me just come and say hi. I'm normal.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"predictions" http://www.moby.com/journal/2001-02-15/predictions.html, journal entry (15 February 2001) at Moby's website, moby.com http://www.moby.com/

Ted Nugent photo
Andrew Ure photo

“The stanniferous small veins, or thin flat masses, though of small extent, are sometimes very numerous, interposed between certain rocks, parallel to their beds, and are commonly called tin-floors.”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

1878, p. 1000.
A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, 1844

Louis Agassiz photo

“The crust of our earth is a great cemetery, where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Geological Sketches (1870), ch. 2, p. 31 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=49

Yevgeny Yevtushenko photo

“So on and on
we walked without thinking of rest
passing craters, passing fire,
under the rocking sky of '41
tottering crazy on its smoking columns.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher

"The Companion" (1954), line 45; Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi (trans.) Selected Poems (London: Penguin, 2008) p. 58.

Bono photo
John Dos Passos photo
Tanith Lee photo
J.D. Fortune photo
Robert Erskine Childers photo

“Drunk with triumph, I cuddled in my rocking cradle and ransacked every unvisited chamber of the memory…. to see the residue take life and meaning in the light of the great revelation.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 276.

James Macpherson photo

“I am my father's father,
You are your children's guilt.

In history's pity and terror
The child is Aeneas again;

Troy is in the nursery,
The rocking horse is on fire.

Child labor! The child must carry
His fathers on his back.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"The Ballad of the Children of the Czar" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ballad-of-the-children-of-the-czar/
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

Daniel Webster photo

“He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Speech on Hamilton (10 March 1831)

Buckminster Fuller photo
Rolf Harris photo

“There's an old Australian stockman -- er, rock band, trying, dying. They get themselves up on their collective elbows, revert to their sixties instrumentation, and they try again.”

Rolf Harris (1930–2023) Australian-born, British-based entertainer and convicted sex offender

parodying "Stairway to Heaven", 1993
Lyrics

Edward Thomson photo
Chuck Berry photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Stephen Crane photo
James Fenimore Cooper photo

“Parson Amen's speculations on this interesting subject, although this may happen to be the first occasion on which he has ever heard the practice of taking scalps justified by Scripture. Viewed in a proper spirit, they ought merely to convey a lesson of humility, by rendering apparent the wisdom, nay the necessity, of men's keeping them-selves within the limits of the sphere of knowledge they were designed to fill, and convey, when rightly considered, as much of a lesson to the Puseyite, with abstractions that are quite as unintelligible to himself as they are to others; to the high-wrought and dogmatical Calvinist, who in the midst of his fiery zeal, forgets that love is the very essence of the relation between God and man; to the Quaker, who seems to think the cut of a coat essential to salvation; to the descendant of the Puritan, who whether he be Socinian, Calvinist, Universalist, or any other "1st," appears to believe that the "rock" on which Christ declared he would found his church was the "Rock of Plymouth"; and to the unbeliever, who, in deriding all creeds, does not know where to turn to find one to substitute in their stead. Humility, in matters of this sort, is the great lesson that all should teach and learn; for it opens the way to charity, and eventually to faith, and through both of these to hope; finally, through all of these, to heaven.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Source: Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848), Ch. XI

KT Tunstall photo
Kage Baker photo
Richard Wilbur photo
Will Cuppy photo

“[Footnote] Livy informs us that Hannibal split the huge Alpine rocks with vinegar to break a path for the elephants. Vinegar was a high explosive in 218 B. C., but not before or since.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

Basshunter photo
George William Russell photo
Toni Morrison photo
Josh Homme photo
Courtney Love photo

“If I fuckin' die without having written two, three, or four brilliant rock songs… I don't know why I lived my life.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

Remarks about her ambitions early in her career (1991), Not Bad for a Girl documentary (1995)
1991–1995

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
William Jennings Bryan photo

“Why, these men would destroy the Bible on evidence that would not convict a habitual criminal of a misdemeanor. They found a tooth in a sand pit in Nebraska with no other bones about it, and from that one tooth decided that it was the remains of the missing link. They have queer ideas about age too. They find a fossil and when they are asked how old it is they say they can't tell without knowing what rock it was in, and when they are asked how old the rock is they say they can't tell unless they know how old the fossil is.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

As quoted in "Osborn States the Case For Evolution", in The New York Times (12 Jul 1925), p. XX1; the tooth was misidentified as anthropoid by Osborn, who over-zealously proposed Nebraska Man in 1922; the tooth was shortly thereafter found to be that of a peccary (a Pliocene pig) when further bones were found. A retraction was made in 1927, correcting the scientific blunder.

Newton Lee photo
Van Morrison photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Anna Sui photo

“I was always attracted to the way rock stars dressed and the way their girlfriends dressed.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

Interview Magazine (December 15, 2010)

Boris Johnson photo

“I was just chucking these rocks over the garden wall, and I'd listen to this amazing crash from the greenhouse, next door, over, over in England, as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory Party, and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of, of power.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Interviewed on Desert Island Discs http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00935b6, first broadcast on 30 October 2005, about his early journalistic career working for The Times and then as Brussels correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. In fact, rather than failing to beat another trainee to win a permanent position, he was sacked for falsifying a quotation http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6901161.stm.
2000s, 2005

Antonin Scalia photo
George W. Bush photo
Ernest Mandel photo
Tom Petty photo

“My baby is a rock n' roller.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Baby's A Rock 'N' Roller, written with Mike Campbell
Lyrics, You're Gonna Get It! (1978)

André Maurois photo
Tom Petty photo

“Some days are diamonds.
Some days are rocks.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Walls (Circus)
Lyrics, Songs and Music from "She's the One" (1996)

Thomas Chalmers photo
Kate Bush photo
Abbie Hoffman photo

“Oh, wow, what a scene that place was - that heavenly drug down sexual perversion get their rocks off health spa. I was already so bombed I don't know how I got there. I got down to the pool, where all the freaks were. I met Paul America at the pool and I told him we were probably in danger if we stayed, but we were so blasted we forgot what was good for us and what wasn't, and the whole place turned into a giant orgy... every kind of sex freak, from homosexuals to nymphomaniacs... oh, everybody eating each other on the raft, and drinking, guzzling tequila and vodka and Scotch and bourbon and shooting up every other second... losing syringes down the pool drains, the needles of the mainline scene, blocking the water infiltration system with broken syringes. Oh, it was really some night just going on an incredible sexual tailspin. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Couldn't get enough of it. It was one of the wildest scenes I've ever been in or ever hope to be in. I should be ashamed of myself. I'm not, but I should be. Sex and speed, wow! Like, oh God. A twenty-four-hour climax that can go on for days. And there's no way to explain it unless you've been through it; there's no way to tell anyone who hasn't tasted it. I'd like to turn on the whole world for just a moment... just for a moment. I'm greedy; I'd like to keep most of it for myself and a few others, a few of my friends... to keep that superlative high, just on the cusp of each day... so that I'd radiate sunshine.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Ciao! Manhattan tapes, recalling its pool spa orgy scene
Edie : American Girl (1982)

James K. Morrow photo
Yogi Berra photo

“Rock Hudson, I suppose.”

Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach

Responding, in kind, to Joe Garagiola's facetious request for Berra's opinion as to who would star in his film biography, as quoted in "Yogi Battles Third and Finds It Hot" http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/12048270/ by Arthur Daley, in The Salt Lake Tribune (Monday, March 14, 1960), p. 47.

Chris Jericho photo

“Welcome to Raw Is Jericho! And I am the new millennium for the World Wrestling Federation. Now for those of you who don't know me, I am Chris Jericho, your new hero, your party host, and most importantly, the most charismastic showman to ever enter your living rooms via a television screen. And for those of you who DO know me, well, all hail the Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!
Now when you think of the new millennium, you think of an event so gigantic that it changes the course of history. You think of a dawning of a new era. In this case, the dawning of a new era in the WWF. Thank you, thank you. And a new era is what this once proud and profitable company sorely needs. What was once a captivating, trend-setting program has now deteriorated into a cliched, let's be honest, boring snoozefest that is in dire need of a knight in shining armor, and that's why I'm here. Chris Jericho has come to save the WWF!
Now let's go over the facts. Television ratings, downward spiral; pay-per-view buy-rates, plummeting; mainstream acceptance, non-existent; and reactions of the live crowds, complete and utter silence. And I know why you're silent! You're silent because you're embarrassed to be here. And quite honestly, I'm embarrassed for you. And the reason why you're embarrassed is because of the steady stream of uninteresting, untalented, mediocre "sports entertainers" who you're forced to cheer for and care for. No wonder you're not cheering! You could care less about every single idiot in that dressing room, [indicating The Rock] and especially this idiot in the center of the ring. You people have been led to believe that mediocrity is excellence. Uh-uh. Jericho is excellence. And now for the first time in WWF history, you have a man who can entertain you. You have a man who is good enough for you. You have a man who can make you jump up off your chairs, raise your filthy fat little hands in the air and scream "Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go! Go Jericho go!"”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

Thank you.
The new millennium has arrived in the WWF, and now that the Y2J problem is here, this company—from the front-office idiots to all the amateurs in the dressing room, including this one, to everybody watching tonight—will never, ee-e-e-e-(slaps face) ever be the same... again!
August 9, 1999 - WWE Raw

Ravi Shankar photo