Punks Not Dead Quotes

“You know, a government should be a good thing. The Anglo-Saxons and the Germans rejoice in the phenomenon of government. They think that the recipe for human happiness is that you should make your desires and actions concordant with those of the government. So a German and an American will try to make the government work for him, protect him, and he will be more than happy to murder to preserve that wonderful symbiosis. And if he has some money to invest, he will invest it in the government, buying government bonds. He does this regardless of whether his government happens to be trillions of dollars in debt—that is, practically bankrupt. Despite his rhetoric of private enterprise, a Westerner will invest in his government. And we, Eastern and Central Europeans, and particularly Slavs, we all consider our governments to be absolutely the worst in the world. We are ashamed of our governments, and, as a rule, our government is ashamed of us, trying to improve us statistically, to say that we work more and drink less than we do. We think that there's no greater obstacle to human happiness than the government. So even if we have an institution pregnant with democratic potential, such as workers' self-management, we never even bother to attend a meeting unless absolutely forced. And as for voting, we circle any name without looking at whose it is, out of spite. To a Slav, there is nothing more disgusting than voting. We have an aversion to investing trust in any human being. So how could we single out someone we haven't met but whom we know a priori to be a social upstart and climber? So we spend these workers' self-management meetings, where democracy could be practiced, in daydreams of sex and violence.”
― Josip Novakovich, April Fool's Day

“I remember what Sid Vicious taught me about fighting: Do the worst thing you can think of first. Except I threatened the worst thing first, 'If you want to take it outside, let's take it outside,' I said, putting the hardest, coldest look I could muster into my eyes. 'And I'll put this bottle in your face.' I picked up an empty bottle of Heineken with such fluidity of movement you'd think I did this sort of thing every day.”
― Viv Albertine, To Throw Away Unopened

“Incremental change is the clarion call of cowards.”
― Richard Cucarese, PUNKS