"As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be harmonious"
About this Quote
The subtext is less political than psychological. Cage is sketching a familiar arc: youthful identity built from opposition, then the slow realization that rebellion is cheap and maintenance is hard. "I want people to thrive" is pointedly unglamorous; it trades the aesthetic of collapse for the ethics of continuity. Harmony isn't a surrender to blandness so much as an aspiration to reduce needless suffering, to choose outcomes over attitude.
Context matters because Cage's public persona is already an argument about extremes. His career has oscillated between prestige and delirious excess, between craft and chaos, and that volatility has been read as either genius or meltdown. In that light, "anarchist" also reads as a metaphor for an artistic temperament - the desire to resist constraint, to refuse being managed by taste-makers. The pivot toward harmony feels like a recalibration, not a repudiation: keep the intensity, drop the destructiveness.
It's also a subtle hedge against cynicism. At a time when cultural cool often means scorched-earth skepticism, Cage is staking a claim for earnestness - not as naivete, but as a hard-won preference for people making it through.
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Cage, Nicolas. (2026, January 17). As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be harmonious. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-teenager-i-was-more-of-an-anarchist-but-now-65200/
Chicago Style
Cage, Nicolas. "As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be harmonious." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-teenager-i-was-more-of-an-anarchist-but-now-65200/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be harmonious." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-teenager-i-was-more-of-an-anarchist-but-now-65200/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.




