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.
- Billy Bragg Quote

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.
- Billy Bragg Quote

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.
- Billy Bragg Quote

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.
- Billy Bragg Quote

I came into this whole business by going to see Rock Against Racism gigs with the Clash.
- Billy Bragg Quote

I enjoyed so much working with the guys from Wilco, and riffing off of them, and having someone come up to me with ideas, because normally in the studio it's me who has to come up with all the ideas.
- Billy Bragg Quote

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

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.
- Billy Bragg Quote

I've had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return.
- Billy Bragg Quote

In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn't understand why some pop star from London would want to be there.
- Billy Bragg Quote

It's not a very popular subject amongst my audience, who are by nature more internationalist, but I don't choose what to write about, I don't choose my subjects, they kind of choose me.
- Billy Bragg Quote

My upbringing was very straightforward suburban working class upbringing.
- Billy Bragg Quote

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.
- Billy Bragg Quote

The most important thing for anyone, I think, is to be engaged, whether you're an artist or a journalist is to be engaged in the process at some level.
- Billy Bragg Quote

We read our own political content into The Clash, and they accepted it.
- Billy Bragg Quote

Were it not for the Clash, punk would have been just a sneer, a safety pin and a pair of bondage trousers.
- Billy Bragg Quote