American musician (1958- )
The purpose of schools in America is not for people to learn anything, it's to make them obedient, trained animals for a more efficient work force.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986
You only get two choices: corporate A or corporate B, and that's all you're gonna get.
JELLO BIAFRA
SFSonic, June 21, 2018
I am an anarchist in my personal life ... but I don't feel we have evolved far enough as a species to make anarchy work in society itself. We still need government to transfer the wealth from those who have too much to those who have too little, to make sure important projects get done, and keep territorial humans from screwing over and killing each other.
JELLO BIAFRA
address to the U.S. Green Party, June 2000
We were a minor trend waiting to happen. In 1980 when we were approached by several tables about signing, we said, 'Well, money isn't that important, but we want our artistic control.' And their replay was, 'Of course you can have artistic control, as long as you change your name.' So much for artistic control!
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986
Man is still a predatory animal, and we're only kidding ourselves if we think we're the pinnacle of evolution and civilization.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986
Later I ran into people that I went to school with that had no tangible memories of things like Watergate ... We were teenagers by then and they don't remember ... but they remember some commercial jingle! Nixon's Watergate was the best reality TV there is and Nixon went DOWN. It breaks my heart, now, that at almost every level of government is an army of Nixons.
JELLO BIAFRA
Punk News, December 8, 2017
Democracy is for those who can buy it.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986
That was part of the thing that drew me to punk so much -- finally there was the true spirit of rock & roll brought back again -- it was scaring the shit out of all the right people, plus the lyrics didn't have to be so stupid any more. I've never liked love songs. I hated them when I was a seven-year-old in second grade and first discovered rock & roll in the fall of '65. Then as a teenager I realised that love songs weren't just stupid, they were lying to me! Romance didn't work like that at all! All it did was string people along on false hope like hope-dope dealers or something.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, The Quietus, August 20, 2009
What does it say about our country when people are so desperate for an alternative to our one-party state masquerading as a two-party state that they'll even elect a professional wrestler governor?
JELLO BIAFRA
address to the U.S. Green Party, June 2000
If you go on teaching people that life is cheap, and leave them to rot in ghettos and jails, they may one day feel justified in coming back to rob and kill you. Duh!
JELLO BIAFRA
"Rob Now, Pay Later", Home Alive: The Art of Self Defense
Shut up, be happy. Obey all orders without question. The happiness you have demanded is now mandatory.
JELLO BIAFRA
"Message From Our Sponsor", No More Cocoons
Some day, even the experts will figure out, that crime is not caused by rap music ... or even my music, but by a power structure of self-absorbed property owners so brain dead and stupid they won't even see that if you're too goddamn greedy to pay taxes for schools and services, they're not going to be any good any more! And that uneducated time bombs are a very poor investment as a future work force.
JELLO BIAFRA
"Rob Now, Pay Later", Home Alive: The Art of Self Defense
Our biggest national security threat is the environmental destruction of our planet and the arms race with ourselves.
JELLO BIAFRA
address to the U.S. Green Party, June 2000
Don't hate the media, become the media.
JELLO BIAFRA
address to the U.S. Green Party, June 2000
I'm not sure Trump himself is one of these fundamentalist Christians. He just worships himself.
JELLO BIAFRA
Rolling Stone, January 3, 2017
My main measure of success is that nobody owns me.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986
People like the Koch brothers and the Coors beer family and other tycoons like that -- they're taking the long view, and this is what the long view is. They are diabolically patient. And they've already gotten way more of what they wanted than they ever dreamed possible. This is the real corporate coup, slow but sure. And the tank has been slowly but surely crushing us at least since Reagan, possibly even since Carter. Every once in a while they step on the gas.
JELLO BIAFRA
SFSonic, June 21, 2018
I'm for insurrection on three fronts: insurrection in the street, insurrection with the ballot box and insurrection with our wallets. The more we divorce ourselves from paying money for corporate products we don't even need, the less we are a part of the problem.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, SFSonic, June 21, 2018
So basically the understanding on these so-called reissues is that they were done behind my back, without my permission, and the band informed me that I would no longer be paid on them at all. So the people that give their money over for these things might not be the only ones who aren't getting what they're supposed to out of it. They should think twice before picking one of them up.
JELLO BIAFRA
Pop Matters, January 23, 2001
I think what we are witnessing in this country is the slow but inevitable fall of an empire that got too comfortable. In other words, when people are so interested in feathering their own nests and scamming on everybody else or being as macho as the person on the TV or movie screen and not caring about other human beings, of course things are going to start to crumble and collapse around them--just like it did with Rome or Britain or Egypt or the Aztecs.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986