Billy Bragg Quotations

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.

That taught me one lesson which is that you're naive to believe that bands can change the world. Bands are very naive to think that just if their audience thinks that they can change the world, that they can. That was quite a lesson for my career, really.

In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn't understand why some pop star from London would want to be there.

I've had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return.

By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.

My theory is this; I'm not a political songwriter. I'm an honest songwriter.

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.

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.

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

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.

The most important thing for anyone, I think, is to be engaged, whether you're an artist or a journalist is to be engaged in the process at some level.

There are quite a few honest songwriters out there writing about relationships and their own personality traits. But for some reason, once they step out of the bedroom, their honesty doesn't seem to come with them.

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

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.

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

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

We read our own political content into The Clash, and they accepted it.

But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.

I enjoyed so much working with the guys from Wilco, and riffing off of them, and having someone come up to me with ideas, because normally in the studio it's me who has to come up with all the ideas.

Most of the people that I went to school with - I went to secondary school - we were educated to go and work in the line at Ford's, and if we were lucky, technical skilled labor. I sort of rejected that, and thought I wanted to do something else.

An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.

I try and write honestly about what I see around me now.

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

My upbringing was very straightforward suburban working class upbringing.

It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me.

I never met a politician who didn't want to be a guitar player in a rock band. I've got the opportunity to say what I believe in.

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

Start your own revolution, cut out the middleman In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune But this is reality so give me some room So join the struggle while you may The Revolution is just a t-shirt away

Just because you're gay, I won't turn you away. If you stick around, I'm sure we can find some common ground.

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

Don't saddle me with your ideals, and spare me all your guilt. For a poet with all the answers, has never yet been built.

A virtue never tested is no virtue at all.

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

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

[A]s long as you're comfortable it feels like freedom.

The evil lot who did that thing on September 11 did it because they wanted to create a war between America and Islam. And by invading Iraq, we gave them what they hoped for.

What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands.

Baptists burn more slowly.

If you've got a blacklist, I want to be on it.

Money maketh man a tory, don't fire that assumption at me, I like toast as much as anyone but not for breakfast, dinner and tea

It would shine a torch into the dirty little corner where the BNP defecate on our democracy, and that would be much more powerful than duffing them up in the street - which Im also in favour of.

If you thought the army was here protecting people like yourself, I've some news for you, we're here to defend wealth.

Peace, bread, work, and freedom is the best we can achieve.

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

Our neighbors shake their heads And take their valuables inside While my countrymen piss in the fountains To express their national pride.

If there is a single trait in our character that has historically set us apart from other nations, it is our determination to limit the authority of those who rule over us.

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is / I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.

You can experience a download, but you can't download an experience.

At some point in your life you have to engage with the fact that you are part of a society. Yeah the individual is the most important facet in society but unless every individual is the recipient of free health care, free education decent affordable housing and a proper pension then only the rich and powerful will be individuals and the rest of us will be exploited by them.

War what is it good for? It's good for business.

Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.

To have accountability you must get out and vote!

Welcome to what we're calling 'I'll Be Your Bobby Tonight'.

The thing about Strummer was he walked it like he talked it, ... He didn't cop out. He didn't show one face to the public and have a different face in himself.

Protest music was prematurely declared to be unfashionable,

A song is like a newspaper. It's capable of carrying a number of different messages. Some of them are advertisers, some of them are editorial, some of them are reportage, some of them are sport. So, as a songwriter you can use any of those.

They were the true inheritors of the mantle of The Clash.

A part of my job is to bring the news from elsewhere to here and to take back some news from here. . . . You can't change the world singing songs, believe me, but you can offer people an alternative perspective, even on their own situations. So that's what I'm trying to do.

By the end of the miner's strike I was defining myself as a socialist, clued in and looking for the next opportunity to defeat the Tories.