Pete Townshend Quotes

This is the conundrum of the present regimes in the Arab world. They still want to control youth; they want to be in control as they did in the 1950s and '60s. But that doesn't work anymore. Now with just a Wi-Fi link, you can understand what's happening in the world.

I feel like the Internet has really freed everything up to an extent, hasn't it? That radio maybe doesn't have quite the power that it had before.

Twitter is a place where you share your thoughts, yourself... you don't want a plain white backdrop for that. You want the entire page to say something about who you are. Designer or not, if the urge strikes you, go for it. Put up that watercolor you've never shown anyone. Take a photo of that hat you just knitted... whatever it is, share it.

All tools have intrinsic politics and technology is the tool of now.

The Internet exposes a diversity of opinion, experience, and taste we'd been led to believe didn't exist. If you were unusual in 1950 or 1980 - and everyone is unusual in one way or another - you were an isolated anomaly. Now you're a Web ring, a Yahoo category.

After 12 intense years of rock music, I was happy to get away from making a record and going out on a tour. When I did it, I wanted to feel inspired. After a while I finally had my fill working on other people's music, and I started coming up with music on my own and said, 'This could be for me.'

We are effectively living in a world of communications and information abundance.

Our generation's grown up with the Internet, so it's an extension of our social lives; it's an extension of us. It makes perfect sense for me to use that medium.

That's what drew me to rock music in the first place - that sense of remaking the world on your own terms.

When I was growing up, rock & roll helped give me my sense of identity, but I had to search for it.

To define the era we live in is very difficult. How do we define it? We define it by music.

Because it's so easy to medicate our need for self-worth by pandering to win followers, 'likes' and view counts, social media have become the metier of choice for many people who might otherwise channel that energy into books, music or art - or even into their own Web ventures.

Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn't know why.

Police states cannot endure under the advance of the computer because it increases the power of the people far faster than the powers of surveillance.

I don't think that technology is going to allow for greater subjugation of people. I think it's gonna give them more freedom.

The Internet is just another experiment showing us more sides of us.

It is the nature of government and of technology to establish control.

When I was growing up, I had three channels, and I didn't know what happened in the Philippines instantly if it happened. Now you can be on the Internet and find out what's going on in Zimbabwe. It's changed.

'Free' is the museum show of our times, presaging the whole Wikileaks dustup, and it shows shifting power dynamics and a glimpse of the human in a world of flowing data.

My background isn't in social software; it's in online community, social networks, personal publishing, blogging, self-expression on the Web. I got on the Internet in the 1980s, and the magic moment for me arose from my being a literature geek, especially Dante and Shakespeare.

I think I'm just doing me, my music, my shows, and my stories.

I post all the time anyway. It's part of who I am. There's me IRL. There's me URL. That's just my life. Plus, I love it. It's amazing to connect with so many people.

What I've always tried to do is to express the highest point of me, and rock 'n' roll is the first and the most open form created by our generation. The cool thing about it is that you get the power, you get the rhythm; you can be taken over sexually, you can be taken over cerebrally; it's great to look at - it's a package deal.

It was only until I started to be myself that the music started to flow and people started to listen. So, thank you guys...

I'm not an old-fashioned, booze-and-drugs rock 'n' roller. For me, rock 'n' roll is all about doing whatever you want. It's about defying convention and being who you are. I'd rather go swimming or running or kite flying.