Top 1200 Punk Quotes & Sayings

Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a lifestyle.

I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music.

I moved to Naples, Florida, and by 15 I was into punk: Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, Operation Ivy. Along with the classic punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat - all those bands that you get into when you're first getting into punk.

The thing about punk is that there are purists. Once you start going outside of that, they don't think what you're doing is punk rock.

I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.

Johnny Rotten isn't punk. Maybe that's punk to somebody, but these people are participating and challenging the corporations that are telling us what punk is and what good music is.

I'm embracing the punk. There's so much punk style in everything we do and wear everyday; we just never have the chance to do it all the way.

I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.

Punk is an attitude, not a genre, age group, or time period. What's interesting is trying to define the blues and punk in different ways. They are very close cousins.

People would be surprised at how much of an electronic dude I am, and I like new wave, post-punk and proto-punk stuff.

It's all magic to me. Country to punk rock, all of it. Chopin to Kurt Cobain. But it always all comes back to punk for me, because that was the last time, punk rock or grunge rock, was the last time that passion ruled the airwaves.

I am very grateful to punk because I was a girl, and I felt like if I got in a band, I'd be kind of a novelty act, but punk was all about non-discrimination. No one cared because it was punk, so, you know, anyone could do anything they wanted.

I enjoy punk, the attitude as well as the music, but I don't feel like I have to be a carbon copy of it and invite all this controversy just to be punk rock.

If you want to play a cool punk club, that's great - but punk clubs don't have any toilet seats. After a while, little things like that become big issues.

People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.

The one thing I got right was that I already looked like a punk when punk arrived.

I still think of myself as punk, because the way I became empowered to play music is entirely due to punk bands.

It's like, if you sign a guy you know is a punk and a jerk, you can't complain like, 'Hey, the punk jerk is acting like a punk jerk!'

Punk rock was the first thing I found in my life that made me feel acceptable. The thing that got me into punk rock was the idea, "You're fine just the way you are." It sounds kind of dorky, but you don't have to make excuses for who you are or what you do. When you find something like punk rock, not only is it okay to feel that way - you should embrace your weirdness. The world is totally messed up, and punk rock was a way to see that and work with it without candy-coating it. It was saying, "Yeah, the world is this way, but you can still do something about it. Take energy from that."

How could you look at CM Punk and not think that he has the 'it' factor? I don't think I'm any great visionary or genius because I saw something in CM Punk; I think everyone else is a stupid schmuck for not seeing it in CM Punk.

I think that what's perceived as punk out in shopping malls or in chain stores or on MTV has almost nothing to do with what punk is about.

I was into punk, but I didn't go whole-hog. A lot of kids who grew up in small towns that were into punk music went the "safe" way - not doing drugs, being straight edge.

I think English punk died in '79 or '80. Maybe '82 at the latest. As far as American punk goes, it wasn't the same as English punk. It wasn't a working-class movement that was protesting the conditions under which this class had to work. I don't think American punk ever died.

The fans never gave up on CM Punk. If CM Punk wants to be part of 'All In,' he can be part of 'All In.' But I am not putting it on him to draw those 10,000 seats. If we did have CM Punk, we would not tell you we had CM Punk - unless we didn't sell any tickets.

I listened a little to punk when I was younger, but it was straight edge punk. It was nothing like what is going on now, like poppy punk.

I was a punk when I was 15 - I was definitely into it in a big way and loved it - but I came to London when punk was maybe where you'd say punk is dead.

By the '80s, anything to do with punk was perceived as rancid. Me being known as the 'punk poet' meant my work and I plummeted.

I only work with the real Punk, like the CM Punk or the Chance the Rapper.

I've always loved punk music, so it was really cool to do my first punk song.

My experience that undergirds that observation comes from punk, where people might have scraped together the money to be in the studio for an afternoon to make a record. Punk isn't a music that you think of as chance-based, but exigency has a lot to do with it.

I formed a band when I was about 13, and we all listened to punk - or what we thought was punk!

Growing up in Orange County, it was all O.C. punk, L.A. punk. Black Flag, all the SST stuff.

I still think punk's around. It's been pushed into the mainstream and it gets harder to draw that line between what's pop and what's punk.

I don't think punk ever really dies, because punk rock attitude can never die.

Punk is not dead. Punk will only die when corporations can exploit and mass produce it.

I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing, and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.

My music doesn't sound punk, but I see it as a punk action.

It's all magic to me. Country to punk rock, all of it. Chopin to Kurt Cobain. But it always all comes back to punk for me, because that was the last time, punk rock or grunge rock, was the last time that passion ruled the airwaves

A man once asked me, what's punk? I kicked over a trash can and said that's punk. He kicked over a trash can and then asked me again, Is that punk? I replied no. That's just trendy.

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk.

People always said that I hated punk, and that really wasn't true. It was glossed over for many years that I was the guy who found the Tubes and signed them to A&M. English punk was a revolution.

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.

I'm not an '80s fan. I'm more '70s New York pre-punk kind of thing and I guess I grew up with '90s grunge, post-punk pop music.

Stray thought for the day: Putting boundaries on how punk should sound/look is the least punk rock thing one can do. Be yourself=Very punk.

Punk was key to the early part of me playing guitar. I was really into melodic punk-rock. I related to punk more than Lynyrd Skynyrd or Yes or Van Halen.

I was part of punk's second generation, so, not the first wave of '70s punk, but the American hardcore scene. I had a really strong love for music prior to that, but punk created a new template.

I remember being really young - being 13 or 14 - when I first was really excited about punk rock as an idea, and I was like, 'Don't ever not be punk. Don't ever not be punk.' Telling that to myself, I guess it was like self-defense against the scary world around me.

To begin with, the key principle of American indie rock wasn't a circumscribed musical style; it was the punk ethos of DIY, or do-it-yourself. The equation was simple: If punk was rebellious and DIY was rebellious, then doing it yourself was punk. 'Punk was about more than just starting a band,' former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt once said, 'it was about starting a label, it was about touring, it was about taking control. It was like songwriting; you just do it. You want a record, you pay the pressing plant. That's what it was all about.'

On the first album, we were trying to do a pop-punk album with a classical influence. We'd say 'pop-punk,' and people would say, 'No, you're like burlesque-cabaret-punk,' or, 'It's baroque-pop,' and we were like, 'That sounds way cooler.'

A guy walks up to me and asks, "What's Punk?". So I kick over a garbage can and say. "That's punk!". So he kicks over the garbage can and says, "That's Punk?", and I say, "No that's trendy!

Look at me... look at me... I need the attention, oooh I'm punk rock I got some tattoos, I got some piercings. If I'm gonna get some piercings then I want everyone to see it...I don't need to advertise my punkness. A real punk doesn't need to show off...Its like a Karate man... the Karate man bleed on the inside. A real punk is punk on the inside.

I enjoy punk, the attitude as well as the music, but I don't feel like I have to be a carbon copy of it and invite all this controversy, just to be punk rock.

Good Charlotte are a band with punk values - they look it, they grew up on the music, and they believe in the punk ethos.

The only punk that I really care about and am an expert on is the original punk of 1976 to 1979.

I created Punk for this day and age. Do you see Britney walking around wearing ties and singing punk? Hell no. That's what I do. I'm like a Sid Vicious for a new generation.

DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!'

I don't think that the punk sound really became the punk sound until much later. The punk era wasn't really just one musical sound. There are a lot of differences among Television, the Ramones, and the Talking Heads.

Is there a better wrestling villain on TV these days than CM Punk? Arguable question but for my sauce, Punk is right there at the top of the heap with a handful of his peers.

I always liked the skinny punk girls; I even loved them before punk.

The whole punk scene is, of course, responsible for the Go-Go's ever getting created. Because before punk rock happened, you couldn't start a band if you didn't know how to play an instrument. But when punk happened it was like, 'Oh, it doesn't matter if you can play or not. Go ahead, make a band.' And that's exactly what the Go-Go's did.