Ozzy Osbourne quotes: thoughts from “The Wizard of Ozz.”
“There are no impossible dreams.”
“You’ve got to believe in yourself, or no one will believe in you. Imagination is like a bird on the wing, flying free for you to use.”
“You’ve got to try and take things to the next level, or you’ll just get stuck in a rut.”
“Life is a learning process. I love my work. It took me making a few stupid decisions to realize how important my work is. You learn more from your bad things than your good things.”
“The power of people – when they focus on something positive – never fails to amaze me.”
“If you choose to criticize, you choose your enemies.”
“You gotta be really careful what you bite off. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. It’s a dangerous world.”
“If you can laugh at your mistakes, it’s a good thing.”
“Nobody ever told me, I found out for myself – you got to believe in foolish miracles.”
“Be careful, because with fame and success comes ego. Every single person has one, but it depends on how you use it. You don’t accidentally get to be an asshole. To be a bad person and treat people badly, you have to be that all the time, and it’s hard work.”
“What can go wrong will go wrong.”
“When you’re young, you’re stupid. You do silly things.”
“Out of everything I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most!”
“I used to get upset by people not understanding me, but I’ve made a career out of it now.”
“Hating people isn’t a productive way of living. So what’s the point in hating anyone? There’s enough hate in the world as it is, without me adding to it.”
“People think I’m crazy, but I’m in demand.”
“The only good thing about having dyslexia is that dyslexics are usually very creative people, or so I’ve been told. We think in unusual ways. But it’s a very bad stigma to have, not being able to read like normal people can. To this day I wish I’d had a proper education. I think books are great, I do. To be able to lose yourself in a book is f*cking phenomenal. Everyone should be able to do it. But I’ve been able to get through an entire book only a few times in my life.”
“It’s just human nature – isn’t it? To be more attracted to something that’s taboo. If someone tells you not to smoke, you wanna smoke. If they say, ‘Don’t do drugs,’ you wanna do drugs. That’s why I’ve always thought that the best way to stop people taking drugs is to legalize the f*cking things. It would take people about five seconds to realize that being an addict is a terribly unattractive and pathetic way to be, whereas at the moment it still has that kind of rebel cool vibe to it, y’know?”
“Maybe it’s not too late to learn how to love and forget how to hate.”
“With marriage, you’ve just got to stick it out. You can’t jump off the boat at the first bump in the waves.”
“Be good and honest to your fellow man and try to do something good for somebody.”
“My father always said I would do something big one day. ‘I’ve got a feeling about you, John Osbourne,’ he’d tell me, after he’d had a few beers. ‘You’re either going to do something very special, or you’re going to go to prison.’ And he was right, my old man. I was in prison before my eighteenth birthday.”
“People say it’s hard at the top, but it’s even harder at the bottom.”
“In 1964 something totally unexpected happened. I got a job I enjoyed.”
“It’s what I live for. If it wasn’t for music, I’d be probably dead. I had a very poor upbringing. We never went on holiday. We never had a car. We had a very tiny house. And the achievement of that is remarkable. I’ve just had a blessed life.”
“I have a genuine love affair with my audience. When I’m on stage they’re not privileged to see me. It’s a privilege for me to see them.”
“I’m about caring, I’m about people, and I’m about entertaining people. I’m a family man. A husband. A father. I’ve been a lot of other things over the years, which we don’t really want to talk about. I’m always working on trying to better myself, you know? I think that that is an ongoing thing with me. I think I’ll do that for the rest of my life. I’m always thinking of what I can do today to better my life.”
“Never in a million years did I think I’d end up making a career out of singing. I didn’t think it was possible. As far as I knew, the only way I could make any dough was to go and work in a factory, like everyone else in Aston. Or rob a f*cking bank.”
“I grew up having to piss in a bucket ’cause there was no indoor sh*tter, and now I have these computerized Japanese super-loo things that have heated seats and wash and blow-dry your arse at the touch of a button. Give it a couple of years and I’ll have a bog with a robot arm that pulls out my turds, so I don’t have to strain.”
“What’s the best part of success? Not doing a job that you don’t really want to do. You can’t say what I do is a job – it’s a f*cking gift from God.”
“It’s all part of my journey – I’ve done a lot of stupid things, but you learn by your mistakes.”
“Somebody said to me this morning, ‘To what do you attribute your longevity?’ I don’t know. I mean, I couldn’t have planned my life out better. By all accounts I should be dead!”
“I have a saying, ‘Never judge a book by its cover.’ I say that because I don’t even know who Ozzy is. I wake up a new person every day.”
“I can’t change the past, but I can try to make a better future for me.”
“One day at a time. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow and I can’t relive yesterday but I live in the moment if I can. Because I’m getting a bit older every day now… so if you can, laugh when you don’t really think you want to laugh. Just look at yourself and say, ‘Am I lucky or am I not?'”
“Just believe in the spirit that is within you.”
“It [retirement] was absolutely boring. You can’t go and say, ‘I’m retired now. That’s it!’ It won’t take long and you’re really gone for good and someone throws the last shovel of dirt on a coffin with your name on it. That’s the moment you’re really retiring – when you die.”
“I love you all; I love you more than life itself.”
