Greg Graffin Quotes and Sayings - Page 1

“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