Neil Peart Quotes - Page 3

Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal - because I'm an idealist.

It's interesting. I've known quite a few good athletes that can't begin to play a beat on the drum set. Most team sport is about the smooth fluidity of hand-eye coordination and physical grace, where drumming is much more about splitting all those things up.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

To get nostalgic about other people's music, or even about your own, makes a terrible statement about the condition of your life and your prospects for the future.

Pure libertarianism believes that people will be generous and help each other. Well, they won't. I wish it were so, and I live that way.

Like a force of nature love can fade with the stars at dawn...

More a paraphrase than a quote, really, but it comes from a prayer which was stitched into a sampler above my grandmother's bed. It began like this: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep...'

Geddy once joked, 'You're the only guy I know who rehearses to rehearse!

And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start to mold a new reality closer to the heart.

It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later. I started playing drums at 13, and when I got to the international touring level... I got interested in cross-country skiing, long-distance swimming, bicycling... things that require stamina, not finesse.

Waiting for the winds of change to sweep the clouds away. Waiting for the rainbow's end to cast its gold your way ... You don't get something for nothing. You can't have freedom for free

Sometimes you're up against everybody in the whole world - even your friends and family are saying, "You need a single." You feel sometimes incredibly alone.

There's still a lot I'm angry about, a lot of human behaviour that's appalling and despicable, but you choose what you can fight against. I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea and it would change things.

You can't get wise with sleep still in your eyes no matter what your dream might be.

The ones we wish could hear us have heard it all before.

The tarot card 'The Tower' seemed a chilling reflection of the events of September 11, 2001.

I'm a linear thinking agnostic, but not an atheist folks.

To me, the highest expression of life is art with jokes. It's very rarified, very difficult to accomplish if you want to be more than just funny, and more than just jokes about human gaseousness.

Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with.

Howard Roark stood as a role model for me - as exactly the way I already was living. Even at that tender age [18] I already felt that. And it was intuitive or instinctive or inbred stubbornness or whatever; but I had already made those choices and suffered for them.

I'm less comfortable in a gregarious social situation, and you can be introverted and still share everything. It just means that you're guarded.

Those who know what's best for us must rise and save us from ourselves.

Better the pride that resides as a citizen of the world than a pride that divides when a colorful rag is unfurled

Standing in front of a microphone where every word or every slip that you make, especially in these times, is with you forever - you want to say the right thing. I fell into having to extemporize, and it came okay because of tools I've learned. I said [to myself], "Remember [to mention] mom and dad."

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.