Igor Stravinsky Quotes

In my parents' generation, rebellion was pop culture. It's not anymore.

When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful.

It depends on who you talk to if I'm part of the establishment or part of the antiestablishment.

Don't get caught up in fashion games. These kids probably think we're old, nark conformists or something, but really, they're just conforming in their own ways. They're conforming to nonconformity.

Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom

The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset.

I'm appealing to people who want something different, but the world, on the whole, doesn't really embrace different things. Not on the whole.

The Pre-Raphaelites, while very bothered by what the establishment thought of them, also utterly rebelled against it. In everything - social, sexual, emotional - they were out on a limb, pushing the boundaries.

He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave.

What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.

You ready? I have gold teeth, I have braids, I'm wearing Rick Owens moon boots, I have rips in my denim, a biker vest, I love artsy girls, my favourite artists are Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. I'm obsessed with being different.

To be with the others, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean?

Not long ago, a hat was a conformist accessory. Then the 1960s came along, and young people didn't want to wear hats.

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.

Bandwagons roll through our lives. It's up to you whether you jump on them unquestioningly or jump on them to overturn them and subvert them.

It's very cliched to go, 'You're not punk.' We don't care if we are, and we don't care if we aren't.

I didn't want to look distinguished; I wanted to look fun, and also to fade into the street, into the King's Road. If I don't fade into a room at White's, that's fine. My father was chairman of Brooks' and the Beefsteak, and I was brought up in that life, and it bores me rigid.

I'd loved to wear jeans and t-shirts, but everybody was in the peace movement back then. And that was my ploy. I had to be careful not to say things like 'I like meat.' Actually I just wanted to drink beer and to screw.

When punk picked up black leather, I put it down.

Fitting in is boring. But it takes you nearly your whole life to work that out.

The French higher education system has not adapted to this revolutionary period. [It] rewards people for their capacity to follow the path that is open to them. It does not encourage people to rebel or to develop their character.

… all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

Be skeptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests.

Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration.

Note the startling regularity through history with which society martyrs the rebel in one generation and worships him in the next.