I’m not sure if my involvement in causes, benefits, marches, and demonstrations has made a huge difference, but I know one thing: that involvement has connected me with the good people: people with the live hearts, the live eyes, the live heads.
Be wary of great leaders.
Any idiot can be complicated. It takes a genius to be simple.
Edison failed ten thousand times before he perfected the modern electric lamp. The average man would have quit at the first failure. That’s why there are so many average men and only one Edison.
The world will be saved by people fighting for their homes.
Plagiarism is basic to all culture.
And this is the origin of pop music: it’s a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well.
Anybody who wants to learn everything is pretty stupid. You learn what you can.
If I’ve got a talent, it’s for picking the right song at the right time for the right audience. And I can always seem to get people to sing with me.
A song is like a picture of a bird in flight; the bird was moving before the picture was taken, and no doubt continued after.
A good song can only do good, and I am proud of the songs I have sung. I hope to be able to continue singing these songs for all who want to listen, Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.
I came from an intellectual family. Most were doctors, preachers, teachers, businessmen. My grandfather was a small businessman. His father was an abolitionist doctor, and his father was an immigrant from Germany.
One of the things I’m most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties.
My mother playing the violin and my father and grandfather playing the piano, classical stuff.
I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.
Not everybody has to sing the melody.
And the people in the houses All went to the University And they got put in boxes Little boxes all the same, Little boxes all the same, Little boxes all the same, Little boxes all the same And they all come out all the same.
Music has always had the ability to comfort and inspire.
I’m still a communist in the sense that I don’t believe the world will survive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer – I think that the pressures will get so tremendous that the social contract will just come apart.