Billy Bragg Quotes - Page 2

A nation with their freezers full are dancing in their seats, while outside another nation is sleeping in the streets.

If I can entertain people and get them to open up a little bit, then they're much more conducive to any ideas I might have, whether they're about relationships or politics. The most interesting songs, I think, are the ones where the two overlap.

A patriot is someone who cares what happens in their country.

So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.

I'm still batting away on my politics for the Labour Party. I'm much further to the left of them than I used to be, but that's because they've moved, not me.

I'm celebrating my love for you with a pint of beer and a new tattoo

All musicians start out with ideals but hanging on to them in the face of media scrutiny takes real integrity. Tougher still is to live up to the ideals of your dedicated fans.

Being spokesman for a generation is the worst job I ever had.

I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.

I came into this whole business by going to see Rock Against Racism gigs with the Clash.

Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers.

What happened on September 11 wasn't the first act of war, it was the most unspeakable act of murder and terrorism. But it was construed by a very small group of people - there is no army out there in the dark waiting to take over America. It's like being stung by a bee and going out and smashing up a beehive, and thinking you've solved the problem. There are more beehives out there; more bees will come. But they're bees. They're not grizzly bears.

You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers while you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.

If we think we're a nation with great ideas, and a nation that wants to make the world a better place, let's commit ourselves and involve ourselves with our European partners.

Even with politics, stuff comes around again. Woody Guthrie would recognize America today.

We've heard so much about the American dream: well, Trump is the American nightmare made flesh. All the things about 'the ugly American' that we worry about and which the Americans see in themselves, it's all of that. This is a politics of egotistical display.

An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.

Baptists burn more slowly.

That's what I'm about -- getting engaged. Too many people don't wade in the mud with the politicians.

You have to recognise your responsibility to your community for your actions. Liberty doesn't mean that you are not held accountable. Without accountability, there can be no freedom. I know it seems like a paradox.

Going for constant growth is not actually delivering a decent standard of living and the prospect of your children having a better life than you do. That is the key thing that politics needs to deliver: a better life for your children. That's why people are taking their lives in their hands and crossing the Mediterranean and the English Channel.

Whether we like it or not, we live in a post-ideological world. That's how a Donald Trump can get through. He has no ideology at all: in that sense, he's a bit like Mussolini. I think that ultimately Trump will lose the election and in the process destroy the Republican party - but then I'm an optimist, ha ha ha! So he might not lose. He might be in charge of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world!

If we accuse Trump of being a liar, he won't just say 'I never said that' or just ignore it and go on to the next thing.

I'm just saying that we need to find a better way to manifest the broader society's aspirations, politically. The key to it has to be some sort of proportional representation, which allows there to be more parties.

I'd like to think that in a generation or two we'll have politicians whose life experience reflects that of the people who are voting for them.