Henry Rollins Quotes

To hate is to show you still care, who needs that, focus on what’s really important.

As the middle class is predated upon with an ever greater malicious intensity, their children stand to lose more and harder than their parents ever did.

Sarah Palin embarrasses herself almost immediately upon opening her mouth to speak or upon moving her fingers to send messages to her dull flock.

The truth is an anti-war statement in itself.

I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was up early watching television and watched the announcement. I didn’t understand what the word ‘assassinated’ meant.

I think it’s important to have some documentation of the past.

I don’t believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn’t matter – it’s only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.

The more I learn about Mr. Romney, the less there is to admire.

I was in Pakistan in Islamabad when Bhutto was assassinated, and the next day, you know, there’s just plumes of smoke everywhere. I mean, Islamabad is on fire.

Every single record I have is a fossil.

Certainly, there are huge, multiplatinum bands whose singers command their audience‘s attention. Sadly, much of the time they have little to say.

Being in New York is an almost overwhelming experience. While Washington, D.C., is my favorite American city, I regard New York City as the most amazing city in the world. No other comes close. It is an incredible, inexhaustible engine.

Do you know why Albert Camus was so prolific? He wrote to keep from screaming.

I hate painting with a broad brush, but I think the birther thing, at its root, is racist. The guy was born in Hawaii. A black guy is president. It’s cool. Get over it. Just deal with it. There’s nothing you could show these birther people that would shut them up.

One of the nice things about a favorite pop song is that it’s an unconditional truce on judgment and musical snobbery. You like the song because you just do, and there need not be any further criticism.

Don’t do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.

You can’t get your head around something if you’re yelling.

I wonder what it’s like to be from a state that is spread across a few islands way out in the Pacific Ocean, only added to the United States in 1959. Not only that but to be the birthplace of America’s first black president? Pretty cool, I bet.

Nelson Mandela will always be the face of South Africa. The traveler passing through the country will see Mandela’s face almost everywhere he looks. Truly, the man is omnipresent.

I just travel the world with my backpack and my cameras and a bunch of Clif bars.

America sold VX nerve gas and anthrax to Iraq for years, even after the Halabja gas attack, which killed thousands of Kurds.

Live music is the cure for what ails ya.

The only thing about sanctions is that, like a lot of drone strikes, there are countless unintended victims. Cutting off aid to Uganda only increases the pain there.

If you paid Americans a living wage, they would be able to pay for products made by Americans in America.

The only difference between me and others is that they think they can change something with cute little poems, nice cards or embracing trees and being nice to little lapdogs.

We’re at peak oil, peak water, peak resources, and so either we figure it out and let science lead or we head down a very bad, dark trail to where a lot of people aren’t going to make it.

I love capitalism. It rewards me for being brave – it awards me for being innovative and thinking out of the box.

When I am in Africa, I always have the feeling that it’s where everything started. When I am in New York, I know it is where everything ended up.

In the summer of ’84, you just couldn’t escape the Born in the USA record.

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own.

The world’s a better place since I chose music.

I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.

If you are a musician who has released albums, it would perhaps be morbidly interesting to know how much you would be owed if everyone who now has your music had actually bought your record.

Seven-11 is the pulse-beat of America. I think that Bruce Springsteen should do a song about a 7-11 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, but write it in such a way that American’s youth can identify and slurp along with the Boss. Hail the Boss! Hail 7-11!

Questioning anything and everything, to me, is punk rock.

If I had to live my life in anticipation of what others thought of me, little would get done.

I think it is incumbent on anyone who can to lift human dignity to the highest possible levels, maintaining one’s own and helping to raise that of others.

Literally thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the NFL by retired players, many of whom say that information on brain injury in football was withheld from them.

You might as well enjoy the day – you never know when and how painfully it could all end.

Now and then, someone is able to look at an empty space, conclude it would be a great place to start a revolution, and bravely go forward.

When I read that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had disappeared – a state-of-the-art Boeing 777, said to be an incredibly safe way to travel – I waited patiently for the chance to learn what happened.

In the late summer of 1986, the band I had been in for five years stopped playing. Suddenly, I was on my own. This new state of bandlessness was, at first, traumatic. When your group breaks up, a lot of broken parts hit the ground.

Guns are part of the American identity.

Smart people make good choices. They dig science and say ‘no’ to the invasion of sovereign nations for the pleasure of corporations.

Being unique is never easy, and often, by the time culture catches up with you, there are only a few people who notice.

Dinosaur Jr. in their live capacity are a band that put me in a state of such overwhelming rock that it often takes quite a while to come down.

As performers grow older, I reckon there are two ways they can go. They can either be up there, playing more deeply from their guts than ever, or they can be phoning it in so crassly that it leaves a lump in your throat as you leave the venue at the end of the show.