Top 50 Peter Gabriel Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “From the pain comes the dream. From the dream comes the vision. From the vision come the people. From the people comes the power. From this power come the change.”

— Peter Gabriel

2. “We’ve got to get in to get out.”

— Peter Gabriel

3. “You can blow out a candle, but you can’t blow out a fire.”

— Peter Gabriel

4. “With no guilt and no shame, no sorrow or blame. Whatever it is, we are all the same.”

— Peter Gabriel

5. “I hold the line, the line of strength that pulls me from the fear.”

— Peter Gabriel

6. “Surround yourself with brilliance.”

— Peter Gabriel

7. “Fear, she’s the mother of violence.”

— Peter Gabriel

8. “The rhythm is below me, the rhythm of the heat. The rhythm is around me, the rhythm has control. The rhythm is inside me, the rhythm has my soul.”

— Peter Gabriel

9. “I get lost, sometimes. Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart.”

— Peter Gabriel

10. “With this darkness all around me, I like to be liked. In this emptiness and fear, I want to be wanted. Cause I love to be loved.”

— Peter Gabriel

11. “I stood in this unsheltered place, ’til I could see the face behind the face.”

— Peter Gabriel

12. “Deadlines are things that we pass through on the way to finishing.”

— Peter Gabriel

13. “It’s only in uncertainty that we’re naked and alive.”

— Peter Gabriel

14. “With the man in the woman, and the woman in the man. In the blood of Eden lie the woman and the man.”

— Peter Gabriel

15. “Whenever we defend democracy we find oil.”

— Peter Gabriel

16. “The outside world is black and white with only one color dead.”

— Peter Gabriel

17. “The book of love has music in it In fact that’s where music comes from Some of it is just transcendental Some of it is just really dumb.”

— Peter Gabriel

18. “I come to you defenses down with the trust of a child.”

— Peter Gabriel

19. “Once the flames begin to catch the wind will blow it higher, oh Biko, Biko.”

— Peter Gabriel

20. “Music is a spiritual doorway its power comes from the fact that it plugs directly into the soul, unlike a lot of visual art or textual information that has to go through the more filtering processes of the brain.”

— Peter Gabriel

21. “Dream big and surround yourself with brilliance, even if you end up dressed up like a flower or a sexually transmitted disease.”

— Peter Gabriel

22. “Those of us who have the eyes and ears of the media have a responsibility to amplify the voices of the voiceless.”

— Peter Gabriel

23. “At the heart, it is world music that I do. It’s all connections. Ultimately, we’re all connected.”

— Peter Gabriel

24. “One doubt, one voice, one war, one truth, one dream...”

— Peter Gabriel

25. “In your eyes I see the doorway to a thousand churches.”

— Peter Gabriel

26. “I look at the time with you to keep me awake and alive.”

— Peter Gabriel

27. “Whistling tunes we’re kissing baboons in the jungle.”

— Peter Gabriel

28. “Self-conscious, uncertain, I’m showered by the dust. But the spirit enters into me and I submit to trust.”

— Peter Gabriel

29. “There has always been a strong relationship between music and religion. It is because they both plug directly into the heart and can have real power for good or evil.”

— Peter Gabriel

Featured in: Strong Quotes

30. “I think it is the weak and the young and the minorities that you need to look after to get a healthy creative environment – to get a lot of choices, a lot of different styles of music, a lot experimental stuff that everyone else feeds off.”

— Peter Gabriel

31. “People have the strength to overcome their bodies. Their beauty is in their minds.”

— Peter Gabriel

32. “The dream is a world in which anyone who has anything bad happen to them has a chance of getting their story uploaded, being seen, being watched.”

— Peter Gabriel

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

33. “Concerning iTunes, the deals have mainly been done with the record companies. But the artists, with some exceptions, haven’t been very well-represented. This is partly because the record companies have largely been copyright owners.”

— Peter Gabriel

34. “Everybody nose dive, hold your breath, count to five. Back slap, booby trap, cover it up in bubble wrap. Room shake, earth quake, find a way to stay awake. It’s going to blow, it’s going to break, this is more than I can take.”

— Peter Gabriel

35. “Letting go, it’s so hard The way it’s hurting now To get this love untied So tough to stay with this thing ’cos if I follow through I face what I denied I’ll get those hooks out of me And I’ll take out the hooks that I sunk deep in your side Kill that fear of emptiness, that loneliness I hide.”

— Peter Gabriel

36. “They think so small, they use small words. But not me, I’m smarter than that, I’ve worked it out. I’m stretching my mouth to let those big words come on out.”

— Peter Gabriel

37. “Holding still for a moment, what a moment this is, Oh for a moment of forgetting, a moment of bliss.”

— Peter Gabriel

38. “The earthly power sucks shadowed milk from sleepy tears undone, from nippled skin as smooth as silk the bugles blown as one.”

— Peter Gabriel

39. “Hey, I said, you can keep my things they’ve come to take me home.”

— Peter Gabriel

40. “I like the touch and the smell of all the pretty dresses you wear.”

— Peter Gabriel

41. “One thing that really appeals to me is this idea of music being a living thing that has an evolution that, in a way, enables the artist to sell a process rather than a piece of product.”

— Peter Gabriel

42. “Artists everywhere steal mercilessly all the time and I think this is healthy.”

— Peter Gabriel

43. “Having lots of people talking highly of you and respecting your art and your work, this is one of the best feelings that you can have.”

— Peter Gabriel

44. “Whenever there’s a camera around, a video or film camera, it’s a great deal harder for those in power to bury the story.”

— Peter Gabriel

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

45. “I think that you get the mood of a song stronger if you get it right that way. On the other hand, you put some songs out live and they don’t catch flight. They just flop. It is hard to tell until they are out there.”

— Peter Gabriel

46. “I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn’t matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you’ve taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.”

— Peter Gabriel

47. “I think another thing is that we don’t really want exclusivity. We accept that it is in the artist’s interest to be on sale in every place where they sell music.”

— Peter Gabriel

48. “When we started OD2 in 1999, we were really expecting to work more with independents and so on because the major labels were spending millions on their own Pressplay and equivalents online, which haven’t been very successful.”

— Peter Gabriel

49. “Yeah, in the digital world, it is so much easier to put stuff out without a great deal of paraphernalia and fanfare.”

— Peter Gabriel

50. “I love 5.1. Sometimes you can’t squeeze everything in comfortably into a stereo picture. There is a lot more space in a 5.1 environment.”

— Peter Gabriel