Punk is not dead. Punk will only die when corporations can exploit and mass produce it. – Jello Biafra
What I’m getting at is, you know, if we really want to get serious about helping all the people living in the street and getting people jobs, we could just hire half the people in the country to spy on the other half. – Jello Biafra
Especially in local elections, because hardly anybody pays attention to those – but it’s really important who’s mayor and who’s on the city council, county commissioners, sheriffs, district attorney, and of course the school board. – Jello Biafra
You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course. – Jello Biafra
Once you get involved with bloodsport litigation, you can not only get drunk on your own greed but start to believe your own lies. – Jello Biafra
I’m totally down with insurrection in the street. I’ve had a great time with that over the years. Insurrection in the voting booth is the other part of the equation. – Jello Biafra
I have very mixed feelings about Jesse Jackson. He’s very good about labor, and human and civil rights issues, but not so good on cultural issues. – Jello Biafra
Let me start by saying, I’m utterly disgusted with the former members of the Dead Kennedys. – Jello Biafra
I don’t think it’s too hippie to want to clean up the planet so you don’t wind up dying of some kind of cancer when you’re 45 years old. It enrages me that these big cancer-research organizations can’t be bothered to man the front lines of environmental protest. – Jello Biafra
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. – Jello Biafra
I’ve never been a big fan of subtle art. I like art that gets deep into my head and starts my brain spinning with new ideas and inspiration and my whole body is full of energy. – Jello Biafra
All of these reissues were not authorized by me, I do not endorse them, the live album was put out without my permission, and I’ve not seen a dime at this point, either. – Jello Biafra
Then as I got older, I always gravitated towards the hard stuff, Born To Be Wild, then Black Sabbath. – Jello Biafra
No matter what I do, my songs come out in a certain style, and if that sounds like Dead Kennedys, then there’s probably a reason for it. Don’t forget, I wrote most of those songs, music and lyrics. – Jello Biafra
My parents didn’t hide reality. I watched cartoons and the news with equal fascination. – Jello Biafra
If I get even five per cent of my ideas out and documented before I die, I’ll be lucky. I’m not in danger of running out of riffs or ideas anytime soon. They overwhelm me and it’s hard to find time to deal with them. – Jello Biafra
It depends on the situation. I mean, on one hand there’s the argument that people should be left alone on the other hand, there’s the argument to wade in a stop slaughters in places like Bosnia and Kosovo and what we probably should have done in Rwanda. – Jello Biafra
I got involved because I wanted to help inspire more people to get off their butts and register and vote – not just in this election, but in every other election from now on, you know? – Jello Biafra
You have to be down here in the States to realize just how tightly controlled the corporate media is and how much they practise Soviet-style censorship through creative omission. – Jello Biafra
I didn’t really start writing music or lyrics or turning them into songs until I went to San Francisco. – Jello Biafra
I think one of the most important things punk brought back was the whole concept of staying independent and doing things yourself. It made music a lot less boring in any category you can name. – Jello Biafra
When there’s people on the other side of the room trying to wipe out your life and things are stacked against you, you can get nervous. – Jello Biafra
I’ve been to enough other countries in the world to know what happens when you have socialized single-payer health care. It works. People don’t get sick as much. They don’t lose their life savings with a catastrophic illness like cancer or AIDS. – Jello Biafra
