Quotes from Billy Bragg

An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.

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

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.

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.

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is / I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.

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

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.

We read our own political content into The Clash, and they accepted it.

Most of the people that I went to school with - I went to secondary school - we were educated to go and work in the line at Ford's, and if we were lucky, technical skilled labor. I sort of rejected that, and thought I wanted to do something else.

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.

I'd like to think that in a generation or two we'll have politicians whose life experience reflects that of the people who are voting for them.

My theory is this; I'm not a political songwriter. I'm an honest songwriter.

That taught me one lesson which is that you're naive to believe that bands can change the world. Bands are very naive to think that just if their audience thinks that they can change the world, that they can. That was quite a lesson for my career, really.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.

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.

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.

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.

I'm celebrating my love for you with a pint of beer and a new tattoo