Top 40 Bruce Dickinson Quotes

Engineering stimulates the mind.

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.

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

Everything you need to know about Iron Maiden is onstage.

South Wales is a hub of aviation.

I shall refract myself, yes, I shall no longer be known as the prism.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

I am taking a break, but not a huge break because the Maiden record is actually happening right now, and I am recording it as we speak, well not right as we speak, but close.

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

When you cut human beings down to size, we’re really quite simple creatures; food, shelter, warmth, light, heat and you build it up from there really until you finally go Gucci shoes or whatever it is or whatever your consumer desires are. All those desires are ultimately, they’re about gratification.

There are a lot of stuff on the record that I am thinking is generic but actually it is just as good as everybody else who is putting stuff out at the time.

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

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.

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

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

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

I’ve had a bit of experience at lots and lots of different arenas as it were, some of them completely creative, some of them quite technical. The interesting thing is, is that I found that the technical arenas actually are also very creative or can be very creative.

Life on the road can get a little one-dimensional. I didn’t want to reach 40 and have to say all I’d done was look out the window of a tour bus and get drunk.

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

If your only arbiter of anything is money, really you should… go and rob banks.

Teachers need to be more inspirational. But it’s also up to engineering to make itself more interesting.

There are a lot of bands using self-abuse as a marketing gimmick.

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

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.

Kids get bored easily. They have got to get out and get their hands dirty: make things, dismantle things, fix things.

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.

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.

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

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.’

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.

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.