Quotes from Serj Tankian

It's the idea of a multi-sensory experience stemming from music that opened my interest into painting, to be honest.

Sometimes it's better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.

Sometimes a good love song can change the world and create positive energy more than any political song can.

With rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music - you can't do that in jazz. You can't do that with classical.

Awareness in our society has flipped all types of injustice on its head.

We first fought the heathens in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.

We first fought... in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.

Sometimes a good love song can change the world and create positive energy more than any political song can.

If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you'll have zero capitalism, zero competition - it would just be one giant company.

I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for.

People think our music's very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it's just the opposite, really... I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.

I hate injustice, and I can't help but speak against it. But I don't want to get involved in politics.

We are the cause of a world that's gone wrong. Nature will survive us, we've been wrong after all. We are the cause of a world that's gone wrong. Wouldn't it be great to heal the world with only a song? (Sky is Over)

Day is just a collection of hours.

I've always thought of the sky as, like, an open canvas. When I was a kid and I looked at the sky, I always remember being able to daydream, just looking at the sky, being creative, being able to design things. What would happen if we had no sky? Where would we be? Well, obviously, scientifically, without an atmosphere, we'd all be dead.

I've had people come up to me with the strangest interpretations of what my lyrics might mean, and I'm like, "You go! I never thought of that, but that works,"...I think that true art is a universal reflection, and true artists are just messengers of that reflection or, at best, skilled presentors.

I think music has the ability to inspire people and to change hearts, and the heart has the power to change the mind, and the mind has the power to change the world.

Civilization is a failure. We need to think what we can do together in love and peace.

Freedom is only available through Death!

Civilization is a failure. We need to think what we can do together in love and peace.

Touring and putting out records is fun and cool, but I've been doing it for a long time.

I am more interested in how people interpret the phrase 'Elect The Dead' than what I may or may not have intended. I named the album after the track, which is a spiritual song about love, life and death and is the heaviest song on the album without having any heavy instruments.

I've got my own studio, and I've got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I've got stuff that's electronic, orchestral, jazz, I've got rock, I've got metal, you know, I don't have polka.

The most important thing about music that I've learned after all this time is that to me, it's a way of reaching the truth.