Ian MacKaye People Quotations

And in fact, one of the central reasons why I never got involved with any drugs or anything is that I remember talking to people in maybe 1975 who saw Hendrix but couldn't remember it. I was like, 'How could that be?'

There are many things that people do happily that I can't imagine why they would do it... But I have to say that even though I am critical or judgmental of society at large, I'm not critical of people individually. We are who we are.

I've had people call me from bands that are very popular, and they're like, 'What do we do? We want to do what you do.' It's almost impossible to do what I do, because you would have to start in 1980. You can't just do it.

My point of view is, I'm just a person, and there are times when I look at other people and think, 'My God, they spend so much time thinking about things that seem so absurd.' But I'm sure people must think the same thing about me.

I think sometimes my humor is extremely dry, and a lot of times I would say things that I thought were very funny but... I have a reputation of - people think of me as a very fundamentalist, humorless fellow.

When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.

American business at this point is really about developing an idea, making it profitable, selling it while it's profitable and then getting out or diversifying. It's just about sucking everything up. My idea was: Enjoy baking, sell your bread, people like it, sell more. Keep the bakery going because you're making good food and people are happy.

With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there's a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn't let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music.

Music is a language and different people who come along are each using that language to do something different, but all coming at it in a similar vein inasmuch as it's always community based and for the most part nonprofit. Most bands don't ever come within a mile of profit - clearly these people are not playing music to make money.

I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them.

I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.

Ultimately, I'm not the most prolific person, but I've been doing this for a long time, and I keep on putting out music. The only thing that drives music is the people who are making it.

The thing is, people can't complain about profit-oriented moves if they're only interested in profit themselves. You can't have it both ways. If they're willing to polish up a gift and sell it to make money, they can't really complain about the fact that somebody above them has sold them down the river. That's the way it goes.

I think that people are constantly thinking about capturing things that they're not actually present for the moment they're trying to capture. I'm quite sure of this. I think it's insane how many pictures have to be taken these days. We have to realize there's a level of documentation that's just chatter, it's noise, and beyond that, people who are truly documenting are going to have to find a way to puncture that.

I think about Dischord. There's been a pretty consistent notion that Dischord have been some sort of "overlords" of the scene. Some people have felt 'they are too cool for us, or they won't put this out, etc. All we're doing is our own work, our own thing. That's all we've ever done. Our work.

It makes me sad, the way human beings talk smack. It's why I don't like irony. People are too gleeful to put some teeth into something.

People will say "You must miss playing to a thousand people." But I don't. I might miss playing. That's what I would miss, but I don't miss it, because I am playing.

The only thing that drives music is the people who are making it.

Let's say for instance people say, "He's a really totalitarian, strict guy, he's hard to work with or whatever." I don't think it's true, but people's perception of me leads that direction, like I'm a fundamentalist person. I end up having to spend extra time saying, "I'm not a fundamentalist." I have other stuff to do.

What does bother me is that I have to spend time and energy dealing with the ramifications of what people do think about me.

It's just hard to have a nuanced discussion with like a thousand people, 30 of which are white-power skinheads.

Now anyone can move anywhere. I've made deep connections with people around the world since I tour everywhere that I will simply never see again.

Structures can be manipulated for ill as well, especially when people are dealing with issues of power, or control, or violence.

For most people who have or who do identify as or with [song] Straight Edge, I feel like for most people, they're just trying to do the right thing.

I have stuff from 1979, 1980 in my collection. But I also have things from 2012. So I don't know if it's memorabilia as much as it is holding on to things that I find relevant that most people might not.

The amount of money that people spend on saving stuff, they try to feed you this idea that's it's more important.