Halford Quotes & Sayings

I rarely write by myself. — Rob Halford

Man and not nature initiates, but nature in large measure controls. — Halford Mackinder

When I put Fight together, I wanted to maintain the momentum. I didn't want to kinda disappear for five years and then come back. I was just so ready to break away from where I was before and just start the journey. To just fulfill and realize these dreams that I carry in my head. — Rob Halford

When fans love something, they care for it, and that's the hugest success that you can have, as a storyteller. — Charles Halford

The aim of preaching is not the elucidation of a subject, but the transformation of a person ... Our task is ... the sharing of intense faith and experience. — Halford Luccock

All songs have a message whether it's I love you, do you love me or this government sucks in a basic format and then you expand upon your beliefs and your thinking process about what's going on around you in the world. — Rob Halford

The biggest challenge is probably some of the physicality. Some stuff you would never want to experience, in real life, but it's still such an adventure that it's worth all the scrapes and bruises and mud between the toes. — Charles Halford

Basically, Sam Phillips recorded Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, and all those other Memphis guys; Chuck Berry played the top two strings; Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show above the waist; the Beatles made all the girls squirm by singing about wanting to hold their "hands"; Ray Davies got lost in a sunset; Pete Townshend smashed his guitar; Brian Wilson heard magic in his head and made it come out of a studio; the Rolling Stones urinated on a garage door; and then (skipping a bit) you've got Joey Levine and Chapman-Chinn and Mott the Hoople and Iggy and the Runaways and KISS and the Pink Fairies and Rick Nielsen and Jonathan Richman and Johnny Ramone and Lemmy and the Young brothers and Cook and Jones and Pete Shelley and Feargal Sharkey and Rob Halford ... and Foghat. You get what I'm saying. It didn't happen in a vacuum, but it did happen, and now here we are in the aftermath. — Frank Portman

They were and still are a groundbreaking band. Even though they haven't released any new music in ages, you can put on the first Black Sabbath album and it still sounds as fresh today as it did 30-odd years ago. And that's because great music has a timeless ability: To me, Sabbath are in the same league as the Beatles or Mozart. They're on the leading edge of something extraordinary. — Rob Halford

It's a joy to actually be able to control your own music. — Rob Halford

A scientist said, "The very best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person." That was what happened at Christmas. The idea of divine love was wrapped up in a Person. — Halford Luccock

Being of tall stature, it's rare to get a series regular role. — Charles Halford

Hey everybody, this is Rob Halford from Fight wishing you all a crazy heavy metal Christmas and an insane, wild manic New Year! — Rob Halford

Expressions of sharp and even violent criticism of religion and the church have been welcomed, for they usually imply sincerity of thought. If caustic criticism of religious institutions and practices is irreligious, then Amos, Isaiah, and Jesus were very irreligious men. In fact, that is exactly what many of their contemporaries took them to be. — Halford Luccock

How do you quantify love? Can you weigh it, measure it, pin it down with equations? If the sum of all experiences is really just the interaction of a finite soup of chemicals copulating in nerve endings, how did this even dare articulate the infinite?
Mathematicians will tell you there are different types of infinities. Some are countable, some are not. We can love someone more and more; we can stop loving. But we can never guess how much all this is. Love has no units. — Sean J Halford

I've spent a lot of time in the States, and the Big Country elates and irritates me simultaneously. It is a big boy child that frequently needs a hug: sometimes needing the prissiness of the world to remind it that its voice is not the only one. Africa is older and wiser, a poor grandmother, a pillaged woman, but still a strong woman. She knows she is a daughter of Earth. There are the sexy aunts of Asia and Europe, and of course, the fussy, once histrionic mother that is Britain. But it was Africa taught America the lesson of liberty. — Sean J Halford

Love, I guess, is as much a way of life as it is a constellation of feelings: you become used to each other, you become each other's habits. — Sean J Halford

I believe in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. — Halford Luccock

Dear Halford, When we were together last, you gave me a very particular and interesting account of the most remarkable occurrences of your early life, previous to our acquaintance; and then you requested a return of confidence from me. Not being in a story-telling humour at the time, I declined, under the plea of having nothing to tell, and the like shuffling excuses, which were regarded as wholly inadmissible by you; for though you instantly turned the conversation, it was with the air of an uncomplaining, but deeply injured man, and your face was overshadowed with a cloud which darkened it to the end of our interview, and, for what I known, darkens it still; for your letters have, ever since, been distinguished by a certain dignified, semi-melancholy stiffness and reserve, that would have been very affecting, if my conscience had accused me of deserving it. — Anne Bronte

Anybody who has done high school physics knows Newton's Third Law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You push against a wall; it pushes back against you. I love the poetry hidden in these truths, in the many laws we've discovered that underpin the universal fabric. We search for meaning ever hungrier, perhaps even with desperation: the symmetry in the equations freaks us out; for all we know, there is just us on this lonely little marble in the inky void. — Sean J Halford

I played the track 'Exciter' backwards and suggested to the judge that what he'd heard was, 'I asked her for a peppermint. I asked her to get me one'. When the judge heard it, his eyes lit up. It was as if he realized how ridiculous the whole thing was. — Rob Halford

Knowledge is one. Its division into subjects is a concession to human weakness. — Halford Mackinder

It's tragic that most of us spend our private lives paradoxically thinking something is watching us and permanently disapproving. We say we believe in benevolent deities but smear them with hate and the power to smite. We see sin everywhere, when the only sin is when we forget to treat each other with respect. That is the sad secret that makes the Universe vulnerable. — Sean J Halford

There's always some pressure to achieve something. You make a pilot, but you don't know if you're going to get a show. And then, you make a show, but you don't know if people are going to watch. And then, people watch, but you don't know if enough people are watching. — Charles Halford

Who doesn't want to be loved? That's the whole point. So, when you can get that from someone across the globe, for just telling a story, that's a special thing. — Charles Halford

There is the liability of accepting prematurely an artificial horizon for our own character and personality, of losing the horizon of the possible person we might be. It is the danger of considering our character as something static, rather than as something emerging. — Halford Luccock

I've whittled my fascination with the cosmos down to this mantra: we can imagine the Universe as a giant void racing away from us at a frightening speed, or it could occur to us that, in fact, it is wrapped around us in all directions. Then, no matter where we are, we are at the centre of something wonderful. And that's how I've always thought about it. — Sean J Halford

Tears are a wonderful thing; they wash, they warm, they are the rivers that run through our minds, seeking release. In their salinity they remind us that we came from the sea. Our cells know this, and go about their machinations, ceaselessly recreating the primordial brine. We are water, whether or not the Spirit of God once hovered formless and magnificent above the idea of us, in some ancient place before the Singularity uncoiled itself into space and time. — Sean J Halford

It is a troublesome thing, Halford, this susceptibility to affronts where none are intended. — Anne Bronte

My mother once said if you can't handle the fact that your world-view might be entirely inaccurate, you are not worthy of believing in it. — Sean J Halford

In trying to explain life we have reduced it to a series of chemical reactions, whether it be the burning of glucose in mitochondria to create energy, or the folding of proteins to make bile, or pollen, or blood. Zoom out to where we perceive things, the titanic mathematics of it all is silent. We have twisted our thoughts and feelings into all sorts of psychological origami about whether these things are a result of evolution, intelligent design, or creation ex nihilo, and for all we know, our little planet is the only place that holds all of this wonder in a void that is too staggeringly huge to conceive. — Sean J Halford

Thousands of cars and a million guitars
Screaming with power in the air!
We've found the place where the decibels race
This army of rock will be there
To ram it down
Ram it down!
Straight to the heart of this town.
Ram it down.
Ram it down.
Razing the place to the ground,
Ram it down! — Rob Halford

I love engaging with the fans. It's fun. — Charles Halford

No one can whistle a symphony. — Halford Luccock

I would love to be in the Hall Of Fame. — Rob Halford

We have a moral obligation to be interesting, for our gospel is loaded with life-and-death interest for people. — Halford Luccock

I'll always have a totally open mind to endless possibilities. I want to do a dance album. Not Techno, but a record that's exclusively designed for people to dance to. That whole dance genre is kinda into its own world. I'd just like to get in there and mess around with that. — Rob Halford

I do my best; I put out things I believe in and if you don't like it then pass on to something else. — Rob Halford

Frank Halford was a master at the school and remembers Adams as "very tall even then, and popular. He wrote an end-of-term play when Doctor Who had just started on television. He called it 'Doctor Which.' " Many years later, Adams did write scripts for Doctor Who. He describes Halford as an inspirational teacher who is still a support. "He once gave me ten out of ten for a story, which was the only time he did throughout his long school career. And even now, when I have a dark night of the soul as a writer and think that I can't do this anymore, the thing that I reach for is not the fact that I have had best-sellers or huge advances. It is the fact that Frank Halford once gave me ten out of ten, and at some fundamental level I must be able to do it. — Douglas Adams

All I've got on my iPod is every single Queen song and every single Judas Priest song. Queen were an incredible heavy metal band. I saw them on their first ever tour, at Birmingham Town Hall. They just blew me away. — Rob Halford

Their brilliant audio expert, who is a marine biologist, should really be looking after Flipper — Rob Halford

For the first time we can perceive something of the real proportion of features and events on the stage of the whole world, and may seek a formula which shall express certain aspects, at any rate, of geographical causation in universal history. — Halford Mackinder

(cleaning out a closet that's been staring at you for months can feel just about as good, brain-wise, as getting a promotion that you've worked for). — Scott G. Halford

The Christian message is not an exhortation - "try hard to be good." Good advice, but there is no saving gospel in that. — Halford Luccock

We had to sit in this courtroom in Reno for six weeks. It was like Disneyworld. We had no idea what a subliminal message was - it was just a combination of some weird guitar sounds, and the way I exhaled between lyrics. I had to sing 'Better by You, Better Than Me' in court, a cappella. I think that was when the judge thought, 'What am I doing here? No band goes out of its way to kill its fans'. — Rob Halford

It tore us up emotionally hearing someone say to the judge and the cameras that this is a band that creates music that kills young people. We accept that some people don't like heavy metal, but we can't let them convince us that it's negative and destructive. Heavy metal is a friend that gives people great pleasure and enjoyment and helps them through hard times.
Whether there's any 'subliminal effect' from the court, I don't know, but we certainly couldn't let it interfere with our creativity. — Rob Halford

Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island controls the world. — Halford Mackinder

No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it. — Halford Luccock

Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: "Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are." - Halford E. Luccock — Guy Kawasaki

We want union with something, even if the opposite seems true. Bring two atomic nuclei together and their positive electrostatic forces will repel each other, but, with the patience and strength of the blind god of the galaxies, there comes a point where something bigger takes over and welds them together. Physicists call it the Strong Nuclear Force; I've called this magic glue God. All the elements heavier than hydrogen were so formed, forged in the great hearts of the stars: sulphur, potassium, gold, radium. Everything you can think of. — Sean J Halford