Socialists From England

"I'd like to say that people people can change anything they want to; and that means everything in the world. Show me any country and there'll be people in it. And it's the people that make the country. People have got to stop pretending they're not on the world. People are running about following their little tracks. I am one of them. But we've all gotta stop just stop following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything; this is something that I'm beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other; it's because they've been dehumanized. It's time to take that humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed... it ain't going anywhere! They should have that on a big billboard across Times Square. Think on that. Without people you're nothing."

"When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don't learn nothing, cause hey, it's not your fault, it's his fault, over there."

"What I like about playing America is you can be pretty sure you're not going to get hit with a full can of beer when you're singing and I really enjoy that!"

"My motto is, 'What's the hurry?' I'm trying to get it across to the modern world that we need to sit around and think a little bit more."

"Everyone has got to realise you can't hold onto the past if you want any future. Each second should lead to the next one."

"[T]he toughest thing is facing yourself. Being honest with yourself, that's much tougher than beating someone up. That's what I call tough."

"For me the music is a vehicle for my lyrics. It's a chance to get some really good words across."

"Anybody who makes speeches written by someone else is just a robot."

"Too many songs have been written about love already, you know? Subject's covered."

"I'm all lost in the supermarket I can no longer shop happily I came in here for that special offer A guaranteed personality"

"I think that the corporation is running it and will always make it appeal to the lowest common denominator. I think we're going to have to forget about the radio and just go back to word of mouth."

"I'd define it as self-awareness: an ability to trust your own judgment. An ability to see through veils of bullshit or spins on stories or propaganda. Maybe an ability to think for yourself."

"We got all the influences for it [Global a Go-Go] from Willesden High Road. When you go out for milk and cigarettes you go through three countries because all the shops and cafes are playing their own music, like going through hell."

"Singing into a cold wind is the worst nightmare for any singer. You could hear it in the voice."

"I think you have to grow up and realise that we're facing religious fanatics who would kill everyone in the world who doesn't do what they say. The more time you give them the more bombs they'll get. Bin Laden is going to try and kill more people. It helps the fanatics."

"I like to just feel how I feel and not worry about it really."

"I try and keep an ear out and keep an open mind and enjoy something where I don't know what the hell is going on inside of it. That's what I really get out of it. Because to me it's new. That's what I get out of it. That joyful feeling of you don't know what's going to happen next."

"I have a big legacy of The Clash to live up to and I don't intend to uriny on a legend. I intend to build forward into the next century. The music has to be by the musicians, and there's too much changing things by the record company. I got a message for everyone in a record company: We don't care if you lose your job! You ruin music and I'll get all the smoothers out off the way, the people who smooth the sound off. Let the musicians have the music the way they want it, and not the way you think the grandmothers and 3-year olds will gonna buy it. Cause this is not about 3-year olds or grandmothers... This is Rock and Roll!"

"The way you get a better world is, you don’t put up with substandard anything."

"I hate it when I go out and I see parents going, "don't do that", or "stop doing that" when some kid's just hanging off a staircase or something. There's too much of this, "don't do that". The whole thing baffles me."

"Everything's fucked! It's down to individual people to make life enjoyable. I don't have anything more to say than that. I think people should avoid the world fucking them up. People are becoming too uptight, treating their children bad, being negative."

"I would say it was about time that you believe in something. And sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll ain't it.... A lot of people used to think they were."

"I'll tell you something. When you see you become part of the cycle of generations, you lose your ego in the process, because you ain't nothin' special. You're just another cipher in the generations. When you devote all your interest into another person, you lose your self-obsession, and that's when you understand what it is. You don't know (anything) without that moment. You don't want anything to harm this helpless being. That's a fantastic change. And that's when you understand what's happening. I never understood anything until my first baby looked at me. I didn't understand (anything). Now I understand."

"I'm a human being. I'm not dumping on what I've done. I mean I know we were doing social (stuff), all right? I just don't like boastin' about it, OK? I know what we were doin'. I know damn well what we did. But I ain't gonna start crying about it now, all right?"

"Why should a man deliberately encircle his mind with needless prison walls. No man can reach highest excellence who puts limits to his own thought."

"Two things greater Than all things are; And the first is love And the second is war."

"Good or bad I propose to be something great!"

"What does it matter whether millions of semi-brainless beings curse or bless my memory? It is equally one to me whether they hang my bones in chains like they did the bones of Cromwell, or build a pyramid of stone over my mouldering coffin. Today only do I regard. Today I know. Today is mine. Today I wish to be something."

"[A] reasoned negation of the Ten Commandments—the Golden Rule–the Sermon on the Mount—Republican Principles—Christian Principles—and "Principles" in general. It proclaims upon scientific evolutionary grounds, the unlimited absolutism of Might, and asserts that cut-and-dried moral codes are crude and immoral inventions, promotive of vice and vassalage."

"Now what I desire to know is this: If we want to shoot a man and he badly wants to shoot us, why should we not take his property (if we can) as well as his life? Isn't that the way men win a 'fatherland' first? Don't they fight and conquer the original owners and then take the land? Very well then, what is the good of being a soldier, of risking your life, and being a brave man in battle, if you cannot sieze from your beaten enemy, what your greater valor wins and what you stand badly in need of?"

"Why do men go to war? Is it not in some way to better their condition. All these new fangled notions that men fight for other things than their own personal advantage is pure delusion. It is the solid things of life that men are ever after, though some of them haven't the courage to admit it. What is love of country but love of it's good things?"

"Why should we not go to the extremes if we desire to play a part in the great world drama?...to go to the extremes is ever symptomatic of genius and greatness. Weakness is to compromise, to hesitate, to be halfhearted."

"There is no field of activity for great men without the coming of great wars, great struggles and great revolutions."

"The reason there are no great poets and writers now is because there are no great deeds or heroes to write about. The world is becoming tame and sad and dreary."

"Those three divine attributes of a perfect woman: goodness, beauty and wealth."

"Most women you know are very much interested in the man who is reputed to be deeply admired by other women."

"Women find little pleasure in the society of women."

"Women have ever been the stumbling block and betrayers of ambition."

"Shall it be said of us in after years that we studied the history of the rise and fall of empires, republics, revolutions , and Caesar's for naught? Shall men say of us we missed our opportunity?."

"It can postpone death, cure disease, release the captive, bring sight to the blind, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, destroy the despot, win the love of women, and procure all reasonable earthly happiness to any man who is not entirely too old. In course of time perhaps it may even resurrect the dead, create life and storm the very gates of heaven, for money is force and force is the essence of the universe."

"Let us turn passing events to our own advantage. Out of conditions as they exist let us carve out fortunes and realize our ambitions. In the beginning nature made man a contending animal. Are we not all Greeks or Trojans? We must therefore make up our minds for a life of continual battle, we must fight, I say, morning, noon and night, if need be against an entire world."

"As a mother you have got to have a view for now and a view for the future."

"I've been to Sarajevo a few times and have got to know a lot of people there who put on plays during the siege. I wanted to share in that because I knew it was important to them . . . I began to see something of what was going on there in terms of actually keeping up people's spirit to resist - the resistance that causes change - even in the worst imaginable circumstances. And I realized that it paralleled the same spirit that existed during the Holocaust and in the gulag. Theater and poetry were what helped people stay alive and want to go on living. That experience changed me, because I realized that if, as actors or writers or directors or designers, we can keep the will to resist alive in as many people as possible, then that's what we are about, and that's what we can do. It's more and more important because of the terrible things that are happening in our cities and the political and economic agendas that various governments have."

"I've come to see through the course of my life that people understand what I've tried to do, however inadequately I do it. I've just found people have come to understand me and be glad that I tried to do what I tried to do. And I do feel very inadequate about it, but I feel I must try . . . I think that any citizen can understand that you must raise your voice and do the best you can to speak out. CNN Larry King Live (June 18, 2005)."

"There's no dearth of kindness In this world of ours; Only in our blindness We gather thorns for flowers."

"In this dim world of clouding cares, We rarely know, till wildered eyes See white wings lessening up the skies, The angels with us unawares."

"They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth."

"One sharp stern struggle and the slaves of centuries are free."

"The time shall come When man to man shall be a friend and brother."

"The kingliest kings are crowned with thorn."