John Lydon Quotes

As the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic force in society.

There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won't.

The handful of corporations that own most of the media outlets have an interest in reflecting establishment views.

Television represents what happens to a medium when the artists have no power and the businessmen are in full, unquestioned control.

Ain't singing for Pepsi, ain't singing for Coke, I don't sing for nobody, makes me look like a joke.

What can we say about a marketing culture that so openly feeds and colludes with obsession? The Disney empire has developed this to an unprecedented degree of professionalism.

In the corporate-owned media, men dressed like Ronald Reagan and women dressed like Rita Hayworth disseminate grotesque exaggerations and gossip in authoritative tones.

Sooner or later, presidential campaigns would have professional actors as candidates who could speak the lines.

They shouldn’t, sir. You sold your souls and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question sir, but there is not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it…. We want to put our materials on the bodies of your athletes and the best way to do it is to buy your schools or buy your coach.

Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you.

With media companies today owned and sponsored by large corporations, it is difficult to know whether the news can be trusted.

Tech companies approach you to hold something in a picture and then say, 'This is what I want you to write on your Twitter.' There are people who get away with that and look really cool doing it, but I'm just not one of them.

Everything's so commercialised it shuts down the underground.

I'm genuine! I've not got some dark, shadowy corporation behind me pulling the strings.

I think 'astroturfing' goes against the conservative creed because it violates the desire we share to be self-sufficient, and this is understandable, something with which I agree.

Capitalism and people who control the market have a large hand in everything. It doesn't have anything to do with figuring out what the crowd wants to hear. It has to do with the media deciding what they think people want to hear.

If people want to take the chance to watch, to see what I bring and try to use it to better themselves, yeah, OK. But I'm not one of these guys who's going to try to be a role model and be an angel because I want to get a Nike sponsorship.

I've always said it's easier for bands to make a hard stance - like, we don't do commercials or whatever, blah blah blah - when you've sold billions of records. It's super-easy to be righteous when you're rich.

You don't have to take my word for it, obviously, but in making 1,000 videos, 98 per cent of them I lost money on. So I know a thing or two about staying true and rising above the money. Because if I was for the money I would be someone who'd put up Coca Cola in my videos left and right.

My biggest thing is that I never want to sell out. Or be a sellout.

We have screwed with our environment. We have a culture that's going crazy, and it's all being propelled by the trillion-dollar advertising corporations.

It's really difficult for mainstream - let's say, cable outlets - to talk about things like income inequality, wealth inequality when the advertisers that are funding their shows are the same corporations that want to ensure that the same system continues.

As a cameraman, I am interested in images and truth. Today, people are conditioned to accept lies if they are commercial lies. What we don't see anymore is ethics.

Yes, the mainstream media is painfully biased.

We buy into all kinds of lies that are sold to us from advertising to Fox news or from the Vatican to Goldman Sachs.