Serj Tankian Quotes & Sayings

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

“Sometimes it's better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I am more interested in how people interpret the phrase 'Elect The Dead' than what I may or may not have intended. I named the album after the track, which is a spiritual song about love, life and death and is the heaviest song on the album without having any heavy instruments.”

“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.”

“Pretending that we live doesn't make us alive.”

“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'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.”

“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.”