Best 54 quotes of Bruce Dickinson on MyQuotes

A few of these interviews have gone slightly awry, because every now and again there has been the odd conflict of interest between interviews because of the Iron Maiden record, and I am a bit long-winded.

A guy called Arthur Brown... was a big influence of mine... and also Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull.

Anybody auditions for X-Factor it's because they want to be famous, not because they are artists.

Apart from death and taxes, the one thing that's certain in this life is that I'll never be a fashion icon.

Best two rock voices I've heard in a last few years both have been from grunge bands: it's Eddie Vedder and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden.

Business is just about enabling human beings, nothing more, nothing less. Businesses need to recognize this fundamental fact.

Don't ask me to put up a shelf, but I love engineering.

Engineering stimulates the mind.

Engineering stimulates the mind. Kids get bored easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things, dismantle things, fix things. When the schools can offer that, you'll have an engineer for life.

Everything you need to know about Iron Maiden is onstage.

Fly, on your way, like an eagle / Fly as high as the Sun.

I do like Marylin Manson, actually. I think, he's very talented and he did make some great music.

I don't have interns. I don't have a manager. I don't have assistants. I don't have a secretary. I can't figure out Outlook Express. I'm the worst person in the world answering e-mails, and my phone is probably the oldest, most battered phone you can find. So I just talk to people.

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I enjoy making solo albums because over the years it's evolved into more of a genuine personal expression of story-telling and day dreams, and I work in a way that has more control.

If heavy metal bands ruled the world, we'd be a lot better off.

I find that fencing and training give me more stamina and help me deal with the craziness of being on the road so much.

If it all just happens like this for the rest of my life, it's going to be one endless Groundhog Day. I determined that I was not prepared to submit to this regime, so I thought I had to do something about it.

If you really want to annoy me, ask me when I'm going to retire from rock n' roll.

I guess it was the first time I really thought about leaving. I don't just mean Iron Maiden, I mean quitting music altogether. I just thought, 'Nothing is worth feeling like this for.' I began to feel like I was a piece of machinery, like I was part of the lighting rig.

I guess that the salary that they get when they are working with me is, like, it beats working at McDonalds, so it has got some things going for it.

I'm not going to do any more solo touring.

I'm trying to be as green as I can. As an airline pilot, I have a carbon footprint that's a size 10, so it's pretty hard.

I'm very good at daydreaming. Ask any of my schoolteachers.

I never intended to become a professional pilot. But, as I became more curious about aircraft, and, well, not being John Travolta, I realized that the only way I was ever going to fly a jet is if I got a job.

In my naïvety, I thought people who were in rock 'n' roll bands were great artists, and it was a huge shock to the system to realise that they weren't, that they didn't even aspire to be, really. Some of them did, maybe, but some of them, like Samson, were very frightened of the idea.

In my teenage years I was put off the idea of a career in flying, because I'd convinced myself that you had to be a boffin with degrees in maths and physics, which were my weakest subjects.

In the days when Glastonbury was an alternative festival, it was quite interesting. Now it is the most bourgeois thing on the planet ... we'll leave the middle classes to do Glastonbury and the rest of the great unwashed will decamp to Knebworth and drink a lot of beer and have fun.

Iron Maiden is an institution, and I'm delighted that I'm involved in it, but there was a time that I wasn't delighted so I quit.

I think the best way to find out about something is to try to do it to the max. A lot of people take up a hobby or sport and then find an excuse not to carry on with it. Once I start something, I won't stop until I'm as good at it as I'll ever be.

I've been to the Reading festival twice before-as a punter, though I stayed backstage in the hospitality tent!

I was an accident - my mum was only 16 when she had me.

King in Crimson is actually an alchemical term. King Crimson is a metaphor for Devil or Satan, but at the same time it's also a metaphor for one of the statures in the purification of man and the purification of mankind soul towards union with God and with Infinite, which is the philosophical aim of alchemists.

Life is too short to do the things you don't love doing.

Major labels blow all their money massively and blame it on the band.

My aim as a frontman is always to try and shrink the venue, if you can, to turn that football stadium into the world's smallest club. At least you have to try.

My dad always told me, 'I don't care what you do. Just aim to be the best at it. Even if it's the world's best window cleaner.'

My son is in a band, and he’s a singer, and his vocals … they’re screaming-growling stuff … and he’s got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I’m, like, “Hats off to you.”

Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change

One of my earliest ventures was when I was nine years old. I realized there was a shortage of pencils at school, so I started Rent-a-Pencil. But I made a fundamental mistake. Everybody stole my pencils.

Rock music should be gross: that's the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers.

Some of Eminem's rap songs kind of have the teenage love songs like the fifties love songs. It's kind of like domestic drama set to music. He is really good storyteller.

South Wales is a hub of aviation.

The celebrity thing, I mean, Lindsay Lohan - what's she for? I look at that and throw my hands up in despair.

The mystical poetry of William Blake's artwork also forms the basis for the album cover.

There are basically two categories of music: Metal and bullshit.

Tyranny of freedom is do what you like. There's a world gone crazy, cause it can't say no.

Well, yeah, sometimes I get a little too creative.

We're better than Metallica. We're better musicians, better players. Put it this way, they can try to walk onstage after an Iron Maiden show if they want.

When I write with Maiden, then I write only with the guys in Maiden, we don't do songs from outside people.