Greg Graffin famous quotes

We should enjoy and make the most of life, not because we are in constant fear of what might happen to us in a mythical afterlife, but because we have only one opportunity to live.
-- Greg Graffin

#Opportunity #Afterlife #Might

Humans impart meaning and purpose to almost all aspects of life. This sense of meaning and purpose gives us a road map for how to live a good life. This guidance emerges spontaneously from the interactions of human beings living in societies and thinking together about how best to get along. It doesn't require a god or sacred text.
-- Greg Graffin

#Good Life #Thinking #Giving

PUNK IS: the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions.
-- Greg Graffin

#Growing Up #Expression #Punk

You can look at Bad Religion, and, really, almost everything I've ever done was an exercise in creativity. I've always had a desire to challenge and question authority, and that's where the fire inside comes from. I challenged authority out of a desire to make things better, not to be nihilistic about it.
-- Greg Graffin

#Creativity #Exercise #Fire

You can't take up all the music bins at a CD retail outlet with Spice Girls CDs and leave nothing for the Joan Jett catalogue.
-- Greg Graffin

#Girl #Cds #Retail

Almost everyone shuts down when science becomes too technical; you've got to infuse it with entertainment and storytelling to make it effective. From high school on, science is taught in a very dry manner, which isn't as potent.
-- Greg Graffin

#School #Dry #Taught

Folk music usually has an emphasis on the lyrics and melody. And those lyrics are usually relevant in some way. And it's populist in scope, which is also true of Bad Religion. So it's more meant to draw some parallels between the two. And I think even my voice and my delivery can be thought of as a little bit folky.
-- Greg Graffin

#Thinking #Two #Voice

I have great hope and faith, but it's a humanistic faith based in facts; you have to believe that facts exist. We can all arrive at the same facts if we engage in the process of experimentation, observation, and verification, which can solve more of the world's major problems than a debate over whether God does or doesn't exist.
-- Greg Graffin

#Believe #World #Facts

I was in a choir as a kid. It was from those early days that my outlook on harmonies and arrangements were nurtured. I always took that with me, even on the earliest Bad Religion record, which strangely was only about six years after that.
-- Greg Graffin

#Kids #Years #Six

I'm saying that there were many great naturalists before Darwin's time who were very pious people and who knew more about nature than most of us. These were great naturalists; people I would admire for their knowledge of natural science given the time.
-- Greg Graffin

#People #Natural #Given

I've written almost 200 songs with Bad Religion. No matter where you look in our history, the focus has been trying to instill some of these disturbing realities about the world, some of the implications of evolution into an artistic format that can be interpreted by people who may never study evolution.
-- Greg Graffin

#Song #Reality #People

It's not a random chance that we have Alanis Morissette. She didn't evolve out of a null and void. She came from a former template. She borrowed styles and sounds from a very limited set of other artists.
-- Greg Graffin

#Artist #Style #Void

Most songwriters who have been lucky enough to have their song on the radio or be heard widely don't know anything about science. The best songs have a strong dose of metaphor. Most songs about science don't have that. Like 'She Blinded Me With Science.' It's a stupid song, no offense to Thomas Dolby.
-- Greg Graffin

#Song #Strong #Stupid

You can't let your personal disposition be dictated by the world around you.
-- Greg Graffin

#World #Disposition

Whether you reach a lot of people or have a profound impact on a few people, their memories of you are your afterlife.
-- Greg Graffin

#Memories #Impact #Afterlife

We delude ourselves into believing that morality comes from somewhere else, whereas in reality we behave as we've been told to behave.
-- Greg Graffin

#Believe #Reality #Morality

I don't bill myself as an atheist but as a naturalist. Naturalism is a belief system. A lot of scientists bristle at that. We all have to believe we can find the truth. Evidence is my guide. I rely on observation, experimentation and verification.
-- Greg Graffin

#Atheist #Believe #Bills

A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil... not the cross.
-- Greg Graffin

#Powerful #Moving #Fossils

I definitely was attracted to similar things in punk and science. They both depend on a healthy dose of skepticism.
-- Greg Graffin

#Healthy #Punk #Skepticism

I would say there's a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It's written for the common man.
-- Greg Graffin

#Men #Common #Punk

I'm trying to champion the naturalist's worldview and show it's not as heathen as most religious people would make it out to be.
-- Greg Graffin

#Religious #People #Champion

I've always been on a quest to use science in an artful way.
-- Greg Graffin

#Use #Quests #Way

If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It's a gang mentality.
-- Greg Graffin

#Believe #Gang #Believe In God

It's been an objective of mine since I started writing songs to include both intellect and energy.
-- Greg Graffin

#Song #Writing #Energy

Naturalism teaches one of the most important things in this world. There is only this life, so live wonderfully and meaningfully.
-- Greg Graffin

#Important #World #This Life

The thread of culture that runs through the entire history of punk is also a dedication to challenging the authoritarian.
-- Greg Graffin

#Running #Dedication #Challenges

One of our great thematic traditions in Bad Religion has been to question human nature.
-- Greg Graffin

#Human Nature #Tradition #Humans

I don't think workaholic is in the dictionary as an affliction, but it's obviously someone who has a disease, and I don't feel diseased by it. I just think that I enjoy life and life has many offerings. I feel lucky to be able to have a forum to share a lot of these ideas.
-- Greg Graffin

#Thinking #Offering #Ideas

Unfortunately, the average guy on the street believes that studying evolution leads to atheism.
-- Greg Graffin

#Believe #Average #Guy

I want some fact-based evidence about where we came from. Things we consider mysterious need not be attributed to a deity.
-- Greg Graffin

#Needs #Want #Facts

People need to understand the basics of evolution if they are going to reject it—otherwise, they are not contributing anything productive to modern society.
-- Greg Graffin

#People #Needs #Evolution

Our faith should be expressed in working toward a better planet for our children and not the selfish, juvenile hope for a better afterlife for ourselves. I don't think anyone is going to Hell, because it only exists in the minds of people who wish ill will on others.
-- Greg Graffin

#Children #Selfish #Thinking

The vocal arrangements are a big part of the formula for a Bad Religion song - layered harmonies and background vocals. So when I start to describe the elements of Bad Religion's sound, it starts to sound like a Christmas choir.
-- Greg Graffin

#Song #Sound #Elements

It’s a similar feeling from being in a community of punk rockers as a teenager and the feeling I still get today when I’m in a community of skeptical scientists. The idea with both is that you challenge authority, you challenge the dogma. You challenge the doctrine in order to make progress. The thrill of science is the process. It’s a social process. It’s a process of collective discovery. It’s debate, it’s experimentation and it’s verification of claims that might be false. It’s the greatest foundation for a society.
-- Greg Graffin

#Teenager #Ideas #Discovery

We should enjoy and make the most of life
-- Greg Graffin

#Should #Enjoy

I don't think anyone is going to Hell because it only exists in the minds of people who wish ill-will on others.
-- Greg Graffin

#Thinking #People #Mind

Science is very vibrant. There are always new observations to be found. And it's all in the interest in challenging the authority that came before you. That's consistent with the punk rock ethos that suggests that you should not take what people say at face value...
-- Greg Graffin

#Rocks #Ethos #People

I don't believe, for instance, that evolutionary biology or any scientific endeavor has much to say about love. I'm sure a lot can be learned about the importance of hormones and their effects on our feelings. But do the bleak implications of evolution have any impact on the love I feel for my family? Do they make me more likely to break the law of flaunt society's expectations of me? No. I simply does not follow that human relationships are meaningless just because we live in a godless universe subject to the natural laws of biology.
-- Greg Graffin

#Believe #Impact #Law

Creativity is a challenge. It requires us to be fully human -- autonomous yet engaged, independent yet interdependent. Creativity bridges the conflict between our individualistic and our sociality. It celebrates the commonality of our species while simultaneously setting us apart as unique individuals.
-- Greg Graffin

#Creativity #Independent #Unique

For me, the existence of nonexistence of God is a nonissue.
-- Greg Graffin

#Existence #Existence Of God

When I create, I feel that I am a participant in the grand pageant of life, a part of the ongoing creative engine of the universe. I don't know if that feeling is enough to replace the solace of religion in the lives of most people, but it is for me.
-- Greg Graffin

#People #Creative #Feelings

Life is never static. Despite catastrophic tragedies, life has persisted in evolving new varieties of unimaginable forms. I find comfort in the narrative of evolutionary history.
-- Greg Graffin

#Tragedy #Narrative #Comfort

It's my firm conclusion that human meaning comes from humans, not from a supernatural source. After we die, our hopes for an afterlife reside in the social networks that we influenced while we were alive. If we influence people in a positive way -- even if our social web is only as big as our nuclear family -- others will want to emulate us and pass on our ideas, manners, and lifestyle to future generations. This is more than enough motivation for me to do good things in my life and teach my children to do the same.
-- Greg Graffin

#Motivation #Children #Ideas

If there is no destiny, there is no design. There's only life and death. My goal is to learn about life by living it, not by trying to figure out a cryptic plan that the Creator had in store for me.
-- Greg Graffin

#Destiny #Goal #Life And Death

My science teachers always encouraged their classes to 'go out and discover something' because all scientific endeavors depend on observation and experimentation. Through such pursuits, anyone can find something new to science, and if it's truly novel, the entire edifice of science might have to be restructured.
-- Greg Graffin

#Teacher #Class #Might

Bad Religion has never been about criticizing people who are Christian. But we've always been about pointing out the irony and contradictions in Christian theology and the more extreme versions of Christians that seek to challenge modern secularism.
-- Greg Graffin

#Christian #People #Challenges

So much of the habitat destruction and pollution is based on the simple principle that we somehow have been given free license over other species to degrade the planet.
-- Greg Graffin

#Simple #Principles #Habitat

As I’ve said, I’ve never believed in God, which technically makes me an atheist (since the prefix “a” means “not” or “without”). But I have problems with the word “atheism.” It defines what someone is not rather than what someone is. It would be like calling me an a-instrumentalist for Bad Religion rather than the band’s singer. Defining yourself as against something says very little about what you are for.
-- Greg Graffin

#Atheist #Mean #Atheism