John Cameron Mitchell Quotes

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

The ideology of Miller's 'lost boys' is an incandescent mix derived from PlayStation violence, Iraq news footage, Peter Pan, William Burroughs's 'Wild Boys,' and anti-G8 millenarianism.

(Punk rock is) lunging after some glimpse of a new and better world.

I think my father had a lot of anti-establishment in him. He came through the '60s.

When I was fifteen, I used to run around reading 'Adbusters' and dumpster diving, trying to find ways to make the U.S. government unwind into chaos through hardcore punk and metal.

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.

I was very head-strong, and this was the Vietnam War era - You did not listen to your parents or other authority figures. You didn't share their values. No one did in my circle. It was OK to rebel.

'Fight Club' is great in its spirit of anti-establishment.

N.W.A had something in common with the Rolling Stones and MC5 and groups like that: the voice of rebellion. It's rebellion against your parents. It's rebellion against the system. It's rebellion against society.

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.

Punk is the voice that shouts the loudest from the silence of inertia.

The Yippie demonstrations were merely an attack of mental disobedience on an obediently insane society... and if you feel you have been living in an unreal world for the last couple of years, it is particularly because this power structure has refused to listen to reason... Step outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own rules and your own reality.

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.

Punk rock isn't something you grow out of Punk rock is an attitude, and the essence of that attitude is 'give us some truth'

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

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

Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.

I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.

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

All punk is is attitude. That's what makes it. The attitude.

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.

I was raised on Nirvana and flannel shirts and Rage Against the Machine, and I sort of describe my youth as rebellious and always fighting the system.

I always said punk was an attitude. It was never about having a Mohican haircut or wearing a ripped T-shirt. It was all about destruction, and the creative potential within that.

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses.

Punk music is rebellious.