Ian MacKaye famous quotes

Skateboarding is not a hobby. And it is not a sport. Skateboarding is a way of learning how to redefine the world around you. For most people, when they saw a swimming pool, they thought, ‘Let's take a swim.' But I thought, ‘Let's ride it.' When they saw the curb or a street, they would think about driving on it. I would think about the texture. I slowly developed the ability to look at the world through totally different means.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Sports #Mean #Swimming

An unlocked door means that, occasionally, you might get a devil come in, but a locked door means you have thousands of angels just walk by.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Angel #Mean #Doors

I think that people are constantly thinking about capturing things that they're not actually present for the moment they're trying to capture. I'm quite sure of this. I think it's insane how many pictures have to be taken these days. We have to realize there's a level of documentation that's just chatter, it's noise, and beyond that, people who are truly documenting are going to have to find a way to puncture that.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Taken #Thinking #People

I just have work to do; I just do it.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Just Do It

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.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Ideas #Space #Rocks

If You Want To Rebel Against Society, Don’t Dull The Blade
-- Ian MacKaye

#Rebel #Dull #Want

Part of the way the work world works is not so much creating a separation between your work and your free time, but creating the illusion of a separation between your work and your free time. Every day is the weekend for me, which means I'm always busy.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Mean #Weekend #Creating

There are many things that people do happily that I can't imagine why they would do it... But I have to say that even though I am critical or judgmental of society at large, I'm not critical of people individually. We are who we are.
-- Ian MacKaye

#People #Who We Are #Judgmental

I think that the idea of straight edge, the song that I wrote, and the way people have related it it, there's some people who have abused it, they've allowed their fundamentalism to interfere with the real message, which in my mind, was that people should be allowed to live their lives the way they want to.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Song #Real #Thinking

Major labels didn't start showing up really until they smelled money, and that's all they're ever going to be attracted to is money-that's the business they're in- making money.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Labels #Showing Up #Making Money

I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Book #People #Records

I've done thousands of interviews in my life, and it's a format that I quite enjoy, because I think of questions in interviews as an opportunity to sort of gauge my growth in a way. It gives me an idea of how I'm navigating this world that I'm in.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Opportunity #Thinking #Ideas

With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there's a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn't let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music.
-- Ian MacKaye

#People #Greed #Labels

I've always been a bit of a documentarian.
-- Ian MacKaye

To me, music is no joke and it's not for sale.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Music Is #Jokes

I'm really anti-option, so computers have been my nightmare with recording. I don't want endless tracks; I want less tracks. I want decisions to be made.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Track #Decision #Want

At every election, my vote goes to the candidate less likely to declare war. You're dropping hugely expensive pieces of exploding metal on a population. America deserves the president it gets, whether the country votes for them or allows their vote to be stolen, and the least we can do is to elect someone who won't do that to other people.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Country #War #America

Music is a language and different people who come along are each using that language to do something different, but all coming at it in a similar vein inasmuch as it's always community based and for the most part nonprofit. Most bands don't ever come within a mile of profit - clearly these people are not playing music to make money.
-- Ian MacKaye

#People #Community #Playing Music

When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Children #Voice #Sound

I consider the piano my 'main' instrument and have been playing for as long as I can remember. It seems to me that I might have come up with something resembling a song as early as 4 or 5 years old.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Song #Years #Piano

My focus is always on the day. What I've done behind me, I try to have respect for it, and keep an eye on it, and make sure it isn't abused, and obviously be thoughtful about it, because it's all real to me. I'm basically in every band I ever was in, and the songs, I still mean them all.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Song #Real #Mean

I feel quite connected to the past, and my memory. Everything that I've ever done I can still relate to, and feel connected to it in a way. There's no part of my life that I look at and go, 'I don't recognize that person at all.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Memories #Past #Looks

Minor Threat was an important band, believe me that it was important it in my life, but it belongs to an era that no longer exists. I'm not nostalgic. I think music today is much more important, because something can be done about it.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Believe #Thinking #Important

I've had people call me from bands that are very popular, and they're like, 'What do we do? We want to do what you do.' It's almost impossible to do what I do, because you would have to start in 1980. You can't just do it.
-- Ian MacKaye

#People #Band #Want

I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Song #Thinking #People

I stand behind all the lyrics I've ever written; I don't have a problem with that.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Problem #Behinds

There are certainly good examples of incredibly brilliant, beautiful music that has been made commercially available and sold everywhere. But I would say that, for the most part, quantity certainly does not speak well for quality.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Beautiful #Quality #Example

The first time I ever recorded, which was into my boom-box, I was like, 'Wow, check that out.' It sounded great. The narcotic of it was so intense - it was pleasurable. I was like, 'You sound like a band.' Then I ended up spending the rest of my life trying to chase that initial high again.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Trying #Sound #Band

I do feel like I have always, in my life, been inclined to be on the outside, walk a different path or something. Because of that, and increasingly over the years, my sense of distance from mainstream society or from the way culture works, I have a different kind of perception of it.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Distance #Years #Perception

I was into Ted Nugent, I was a Nugent guy. I was a skateboarder listening to Ted Nugent.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Guy #Listening #Skateboarder

When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.
-- Ian MacKaye

#People #Giving #Incentives

I'm not a religious person, and I'm not too interested in being a part of a religion, but I do like having some sort of communal gathering, and having some sense of peoples.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Religious #Gathering #Persons

I have thousands of tapes, and photos and fliers, letters, posters, artwork - basically everything that ever happened, I kept. I'm not a hoarder, though. I'm sort of a librarian.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Tape #Letters #Posters

Every song I ever wrote, I wrote to be heard. So, if I was given a choice that 50 years from now I could either have a dollar or knowing that some kid was listening to my song, I'd go with the kid listening to my song.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Song #Kids #Knowing

I never, ever had it in my mind that I wanted to be in the record industry, because I still contend that the record industry is an insidious affair. It's this terrible collision between art and commerce, and it will always be that way.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Art #Mind #Records

American business at this point is really about developing an idea, making it profitable, selling it while it's profitable and then getting out or diversifying. It's just about sucking everything up. My idea was: Enjoy baking, sell your bread, people like it, sell more. Keep the bakery going because you're making good food and people are happy.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Ideas #People #Bread

Yeah, if someone's selling downloads and collecting money for our songs I would be unhappy about that but if they're trading it I don't mind, obviously if I make a thousand records or CDs or whatever, I like to sell a thousand.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Song #Cds #Mind

We play loud electric guitar music, and we'd hope that that doesn't mean you have to act like an asshole.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Mean #Guitar #Play

I think sometimes my humor is extremely dry, and a lot of times I would say things that I thought were very funny but... I have a reputation of - people think of me as a very fundamentalist, humorless fellow.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Thinking #People #Dry

My point of view is, I'm just a person, and there are times when I look at other people and think, 'My God, they spend so much time thinking about things that seem so absurd.' But I'm sure people must think the same thing about me.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Thinking #Views #People

The thing is, people can't complain about profit-oriented moves if they're only interested in profit themselves. You can't have it both ways. If they're willing to polish up a gift and sell it to make money, they can't really complain about the fact that somebody above them has sold them down the river. That's the way it goes.
-- Ian MacKaye

#Moving #Rivers #People