Serj Tankian

“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.”

“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'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.”

“In America, there's more of the question, should music be political or should it just be for entertainment purposes, whereas around the world that's not even an issue. I think people just assume that music should be everything.”

“You can say a lot more with a poem than you can with a song, but with a song you can really be more powerful with it. You can express it a lot more powerfully.”

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

“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.”

“Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the '70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced.”

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

“It's the idea of a multi-sensory experience stemming from music that opened my interest into painting, to be honest.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“'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.”

“I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“If you're using live bass versus orchestral bass, you've got to make sure that you're not stepping on the toes of the other elements, so you've got to balance it out.”