Top 40 Billy Bragg Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.”

— Billy Bragg

2. “A virtue never tested is no virtue at all.”

— Billy Bragg

Featured in: Virtue Quotes

3. “War what is it good for? It’s good for business.”

— Billy Bragg

4. “If you’ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it.”

— Billy Bragg

5. “Start your own revolution, cut out the middleman In a perfect world we’d all sing in tune But this is reality so give me some room So join the struggle while you may The Revolution is just a t-shirt away.”

— Billy Bragg

6. “Peace, bread, work, and freedom is the best we can achieve.”

— Billy Bragg

7. “You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers while you’re waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.”

— Billy Bragg

8. “There are quite a few honest songwriters out there writing about relationships and their own personality traits. But for some reason, once they step out of the bedroom, their honesty doesn’t seem to come with them.”

— Billy Bragg

9. “I’m still batting away on my politics for the Labour Party. I’m much further to the left of them than I used to be, but that’s because they’ve moved, not me.”

— Billy Bragg

10. “You can experience a download, but you can’t download an experience.”

— Billy Bragg

11. “If you thought the army was here protecting people like yourself, I’ve some news for you, we’re here to defend wealth.”

— Billy Bragg

12. “I’ve had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return.”

— Billy Bragg

13. “Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers.”

— Billy Bragg

14. “The most important thing for anyone, I think, is to be engaged, whether you’re an artist or a journalist is to be engaged in the process at some level.”

— Billy Bragg

15. “A nation with their freezers full are dancing in their seats, while outside another nation is sleeping in the streets.”

— Billy Bragg

16. “A patriot is someone who cares what happens in their country.”

— Billy Bragg

17. “An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.”

— Billy Bragg

18. “I’m celebrating my love for you with a pint of beer and a new tattoo.”

— Billy Bragg

19. “Money maketh man a tory, don’t fire that assumption at me, I like toast as much as anyone but not for breakfast, dinner and tea.”

— Billy Bragg

20. “Don’t saddle me with your ideals, and spare me all your guilt. For a poet with all the answers, has never yet been built.”

— Billy Bragg

21. “What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands.”

— Billy Bragg

22. “But, in the end, even a song that’s as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn’t get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan’s love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.”

— Billy Bragg

23. “Capitalism is like fire: keep it under control and it will give you heat and light; leave it untended and it will consume everything in its path.”

— Billy Bragg

24. “Those of us who’d been through the cleansing fire of punk rock expected a little bit more, I think...”

— Billy Bragg

25. “Baptists burn more slowly.”

— Billy Bragg

26. “I never met a politician who didn’t want to be a guitar player in a rock band. I’ve got the opportunity to say what I believe in.”

— Billy Bragg

27. “By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.”

— Billy Bragg

28. “I try and write honestly about what I see around me now.”

— Billy Bragg

29. “Being spokesman for a generation is the worst job I ever had.”

— Billy Bragg

30. “My theory is this; I’m not a political songwriter. I’m an honest songwriter.”

— Billy Bragg

31. “The evil lot who did that thing on September 11 did it because they wanted to create a war between America and Islam. And by invading Iraq, we gave them what they hoped for.”

— Billy Bragg

32. “All musicians start out with ideals but hanging on to them in the face of media scrutiny takes real integrity. Tougher still is to live up to the ideals of your dedicated fans.”

— Billy Bragg

33. “It would shine a torch into the dirty little corner where the BNP defecate on our democracy, and that would be much more powerful than duffing them up in the street – which Im also in favour of.”

— Billy Bragg

34. “Just because you’re gay, I won’t turn you away. If you stick around, I’m sure we can find some common ground.”

— Billy Bragg

35. “Even with politics, stuff comes around again. Woody Guthrie would recognize America today.”

— Billy Bragg

36. “So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.”

— Billy Bragg

37. “If there is a single trait in our character that has historically set us apart from other nations, it is our determination to limit the authority of those who rule over us.”

— Billy Bragg

38. “That’s what I’m about – getting engaged. Too many people don’t wade in the mud with the politicians.”

— Billy Bragg

39. “I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren’t very political, at all.”

— Billy Bragg

40. “I came into this whole business by going to see Rock Against Racism gigs with the Clash.”

— Billy Bragg

41. “The challenge that faced the English in the seventeenth century was how to curb the absolute power of the monarch. In the twenty-first century, it is the markets that have taken on the mantle of absolutism, placing themselves above the jurisdiction of national governments. Holding the king to account was unprecedented and went against custom and tradition – holding the global markets to account is just as audacious and just as necessary.”

— Billy Bragg

42. “I enjoyed so much working with the guys from Wilco, and riffing off of them, and having someone come up to me with ideas, because normally in the studio it’s me who has to come up with all the ideas.”

— Billy Bragg

43. “And although the world was just the same as it had always been as I travelled home on the Tube that evening, my view of it had been changed forever.”

— Billy Bragg

44. “All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.”

— Billy Bragg

45. “Our ability to have a respectful disagreement with our opponent s has been torn to shreds by market forces in a deliberate act of irresponsibility.”

— Billy Bragg