Serj Tankian Quotes

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.

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.

I believe very firmly that indigenous populations had a really good, intuitive understanding of why we're here. And we're trying to gain that same understanding through psychology and intellect in modern civilization.

Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.

Pretending that we live doesn't make us alive.

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

Anti-depressan ts Controlling tools of your system Making life more tolerable Making life more tolerable

We have the power to change our lives, and the world around us.

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

I'm not comfortable with just entertaining.

Although I like entertaining, I also like bringing forward the truth of our times as minstrels used to in the old days.

I'd rather let the music speak for itself.

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.

To deny a genocide because of convenience and expediency having to do with an illegal war or occupation in Iraq to me, is double hypocritical.

I've always worked on all different types of music, some with specific project goals and deadlines and some not. Sometimes I would write a piece of music that is almost like a film score or weird electro pieces, wherever the muse took me, and I still do that.

When I was younger, I was listening to a lot of Armenian music, you know, revolutionary music about freedom and protest. In the 70s I was listening to soul and the Bee Gees and ABBA, and funk.

I've worked with some great orchestras and amazing classical musicians, but I don't like the conceptualization of classical music as an elitist form of art.

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?

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.

Composing is what I love most from what I do.

Each genre has a unique expression that you cannot supplant with another. All the records co-inspire each other though they are not tied conceptually in any way to another.

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.

It's probably a combination of personal and non-personal matters that have led us to where we are musically.

It's important for all people, and not just people in bands, to speak out on social justice issues. That means journalists or plumbers have just as much of a responsibility to do that as artists.

As an artist, you never want to write the same song again, you always want to challenge yourself to writing in a different way.

I think as consumers Europeans are a lot more artist loyal irrespective of the genre of music or the type of project or the collaborative effort, and Americans are more media-loyal, because they need to be fed that media to know what's going on, because we're so inundated with promotion and marketing and everything that's going on - advertising.

The best way to do that is to pick up a new instrument or an instrument that you don't typically write on and see where it takes you. Whether it's using an acoustic guitar, or piano, or electronics as tools, all of these lead to creating different types of songs and I used all of these methods for this record.

I think that the memory of Armenia's genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.

I don't want to spend all my time working as an activist.

I don't get satisfaction out of it. I'd rather be doing something else. I'm a musician.

The percentage of Americans in the prison system, has doubled since 1985.

Political statements are usually more direct, and it works with the upbeat music as well, for some reason, the directness of your statements.

With 'Elect the Dead,' I learned how to make a rock record without a rock band and make the rock record I've always wanted to make.

My two interests are spirituality and politics.

I would mesh them in some way; maybe try to figure out the politics of spirituality, or the spirituality of politics. Or maybe come up with this really crazy naive solution for the end of civilization.

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.

As long as people are living their truth or their vision, whether they're activists or not, that's the important thing.

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

We [americans] self-regulate ourselves, we self-censor ourselves a lot in this country instead of having someone else censor us so we can blame them. That's not good, either.

I've always tried to listen to a lot of different music from around the world.

Day is just a collection of hours.

I think the gift of music is it's intuitive capability.

I think music is a powerful medium because it co-inspires. It inspires the artist who then inspires the listener, and it's a back-and-forth process. Because it's intuitive, the truth has to be defined intuitively. It can't be preached, it can't be pushed. It's got to normally go across organically and make someone feel something, and that's the power of music.

'Elect the Dead' is a rock record that takes you on a journey with different types of genres integrated, different lyrical themes digested, and many fun and colorful moments to enjoy.

With most of the songs and music that I've composed, irrespective of the myriad videos made, I was always careful not to overly define the experience, leaving room for people to internalize things for themselves, making their experience more integral.

I have a more direct avenue to expression as an artist than I ever would as a politician.

You listen to Bob Dylan and you can't help but think of the 60s, it's very relational and if artists are true artists and not just mere musicians they need to be truthful because the music doesn't come from them, it comes from the universe and it's to be shared. At best, we're skilled presenters, and I say that at best.

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

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.

Nations are like people. Once you understand the interactions between nations, it's easy to understand why things are done, in terms of foreign policy, in a certain way. But nations are not like people in the sense that we are cumulatively represented by others - and their interpretations of what our interests are may not be the same as what they really are. And that's what's dangerous, even in a democracy.

I think I might write a book. I like writing. People have asked me if I would get into politics, but I think I feel a lot more effective being a representative of truth through the arts.

My personal relationship with music is an imperfect harmony because I never studied music, but here I am not just writing for bands but full orchestral sections and doing all this composition, and I never learned the right way of doing things so I have a lot of dissonant sounds and things that are brought to my attention, and generally I leave them that way because I like those imperfections.

I think anytime that you go to the extreme of any mode of economics, be it capitalism or communism, you have these feedback mechanisms that make the system turn in on itself.

I don't find most people to be as politically engaged as I am.

I do find people that appreciate eye-opening events and words, and who want to learn more about what's going on. I do find people with a lot of opinions. And I get a lot of people who come up to me and give us props for what we do.