John Petrucci Quotes

Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.

Rap is rock 'n' roll. Rock is when you push the buttons in the system; when you say, I'm not going along with what you're saying. That's rock, whether it's done with guitars, or it's done with just beats.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

My entire life, socially, was all around the Maggie era. That was the great challenge as a Sex Pistol was how to deal with Margaret Thatcher. I think we did rather good.

Certainly there's a huge appeal to the '60s, because it was such a big turning point to everyone. It was the era of change, the boiling point. People rebelled against things - the hippies, the feminists, the protesters. All these things just built up and boiled over. I think people can relate to that today.

That punk approach of 'We don't wanna get big' is really a bourgeois thing. It's not a tactic of people that actually have been successful at changing things.

We lived on anarchist farms, squatted in the inner city, and hopped rail cars. We wanted to see how other young people were creating meaning from their lives.

We need punk now; we need it more than ever. We need rebellion by youth.

When things socially and politically get difficult, punk music suddenly comes back again, and there's just a really healthy pivot away from music that's not humanly understandable.

In recent years, many seem to have spent their lives protesting. Perhaps they have felt to do this because they have felt repressed or wished to bring about change or have acted out of selfish reasons, thinking that if they tore the house down they might end up with a shingle.

A little rebellion is a good thing.

...the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given.... if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order.... There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state.

I joined the party because I was a revolutionary, not because of any ideological nonsense.

I think for it to be hip to be idealistic is weird, you know? I mean, even all the best rebels to me, had some sense of hope in them.

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Johnny's in the basement Mixing up the medicine I'm on the pavement Thinking 'bout the government.

I stop and think what they call "punk rock" today...give me a break! Let me know when they can walk in the vapor trail of Little Richard, which was punk. You've got a gay black guy with a pompadour singing about tutti frutti with your white girl. Fuck you.

If you were around in the '60s, you already know that music and art and love are a critical part of the revolution. This is how we fight.

When punk really started to happen, it was a reaction against the disco craze of the time.

Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s.

The truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg's period. Excuse me, but that's where it was at.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.