Henry Rollins quotes

Born
February 13, 1961 Washington, D.C. United States.

Occupation
Musician, actor, writer, comedian.

Henry Lawrence Garfield, better known by his stage name Henry Rollins, is an American musician, actor, writer, television and radio host, and comedian.He hosts a weekly radio show on KCRW, and is a regular columnist for LA Weekly and Rolling Stone Australia.

I am an optimist because I want to change things for the better and I know that blood has to be spilled and disharmony and cruelty are necessary to do that.
– Henry Rollins

More guns equaling more safety is a slippery slope, and what makes it so is human blood.
– Henry Rollins

Don’t do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.
– Henry Rollins

There’s tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time.
– Henry Rollins

Pizza makes me think that anything is possible.
– Henry Rollins

It’s sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.
– Henry Rollins

With any advent in technology, any technological innovation, there is the good and the bad.
– Henry Rollins

Every year, August lashes out in volcanic fury, rising with the din of morning traffic, its great metallic wings smashing against the ground, heating the air with ever-increasing intensity.
– Henry Rollins

We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. We will welcome summer’s ghost.
– Henry Rollins

I try to be well informed. I don’t know how well I do all the time, but I try nonetheless.
– Henry Rollins

I know I was a generic dysfunctional child, but I think a lot of people are.
– Henry Rollins

I don’t want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride.
– Henry Rollins

Questioning anything and everything, to me, is punk rock.
– Henry Rollins

There is no place in the world like Australia. Not even its beautiful neighbor New Zealand.
– Henry Rollins

We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don’t. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.
– Henry Rollins

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.
– Henry Rollins

Life will not break your heart. It’ll crush it.
– Henry Rollins

Nothing brings people together more, then mutual hatred.
– Henry Rollins

Having an identity is one thing. Being born into an identity is quite a different matter.
– Henry Rollins

To this day, my haircut is the number two clippers, which I apply to myself every month.
– Henry Rollins

Do you know why Albert Camus was so prolific? He wrote to keep from screaming.
– Henry Rollins

Scott Asheton was a brilliant drummer, a natural musician.
– Henry Rollins

I still have dreams about CBGB’s. I still miss the place.
– Henry Rollins

Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn’t worth the time and effort.
– Henry Rollins

I mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can’t answer it. If I would answer 25 letters a day I would be just a guy answering mail and not an artist anymore.
– Henry Rollins

Live music is the cure for what ails ya.
– Henry Rollins

You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like.
– Henry Rollins

I wonder how Colin Powell sleeps at night. I would like to have a word with him because he lied. He lied. He lied to me. He lied to my face through the camera at the U.N.
– Henry Rollins

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m willing to bet one of my arms right now that as long as there’s electricity, Ramones music is going to be relevant.
– Henry Rollins

America is off-the-hook gay. I will not go all Ann Coulter on you and say, ‘Our gays are better than their gays,’ but as far as countries go, we are in-your-face gay.
– Henry Rollins

The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he’s a criminal instead of a scholar. It’s business.
– Henry Rollins

I’ve made some great mistakes in my life, but, you know, they were honest mistakes.
– Henry Rollins

Every summer, around late July and into August, I find myself in Europe, performing at any festival that will have me.
– Henry Rollins

Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy.
– Henry Rollins

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own.
– Henry Rollins

Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.
– Henry Rollins

August, the summer’s last messenger of misery, is a hollow actor.
– Henry Rollins

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
– Henry Rollins

You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
– Henry Rollins

In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.
– Henry Rollins

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.
– Henry Rollins

Barack Obama‘s administration responded to the Haitian crisis within 24 hours. Here comes the soldiers, here comes the food, go go go… Rush Limbaugh told his multi-millions of listeners that Obama only did that to gain favour with black people in America. This is the kind of idiocy that I have to deal with in my country.
– Henry Rollins

August in sub-Saharan Los Angeles is one of the great and awful tests of one’s endurance, sanity and stamina.
– Henry Rollins

I don’t believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn’t matter – it’s only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.
– Henry Rollins

I don’t think you’ll ever have a perfect world because we humans are prone to error, and so we’re always in search of an upgrade.
– Henry Rollins

Castle Face Records, run by The Oh Sees main man, Johnny Dwyer is always worth checking in with.
– Henry Rollins

I think self-reliance and self-responsibility and self-accountability will help you as a parent, a teacher, as a citizen as a friend.
– Henry Rollins

This is my own little rock theory: In my mind, Nirvana slayed the hair bands. They shot the top off the poodles.
– Henry Rollins

‘SMiLE’ is perhaps the Beach Boys’ most legendary album. It was recorded in 1966 and 1967 but only saw a formal release in 2011. That’s a long time to wait for what was said to be Brian Wilson’s masterpiece.
– Henry Rollins

I believe that contentment or any sustained period of joy that doesn’t inspire thought that leads to action almost immediately is useless.
– Henry Rollins

As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me.
– Henry Rollins

I am not immune to the lure of a signed record, flier or set list. The fact that your music heroes potentially had, in their own hands, the record you now have in yours is kind of cool. When the musician has departed, it can give the thing a unique power.
– Henry Rollins

Now, if someone wants to spit on me, I just roll up the window of my BMW 540i.
– Henry Rollins

Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, homophobia, desperation, cruelty, brutality, all these things that will keep a society chained to the ground, one foot nailed to the floor.
– Henry Rollins

August brings into sharp focus and a furious boil everything I’ve been listening to in the late spring and summer.
– Henry Rollins

Musicians should not play music. Music should play musicians.
– Henry Rollins

I am on until I am dead, like a light bulb.
– Henry Rollins

Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.
– Henry Rollins

My motto is, ‘Never quit.’
– Henry Rollins

The month of November makes me feel that life is passing more quickly. In an effort to slow it down, I try to fill the hours more meaningfully.
– Henry Rollins

Where there is young people and vitality, you’re going to find punk rock.
– Henry Rollins

I’m not interested in censorship. I like the First Amendment very much.
– Henry Rollins

I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.
– Henry Rollins

Change is hard, but change is good.
– Henry Rollins

I’m not exactly ambitious as much as I have a very good realization of what I am and what I am capable of.
– Henry Rollins

Collecting records is, for many, beyond a hobby.
– Henry Rollins

One of the most insane environments I have ever spent time in is a gun range. There we are, all in a line, armed to the teeth, firing away.
– Henry Rollins

The truth is an anti-war statement in itself.
– Henry Rollins