Pete Seeger Quotes

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

All songwriters are links in a chain.

Come back to town. Bring your darn ukelele! We don't care anymore!

I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. But if by some freak of history communism had caught up with this country, I would have been one of the first people thrown in jail.

"So, are you going to practice today?" asks my inner mom. "Well, sure. But I've got one more phone call to make. The dishes are dirty. I have to feed the cat." I don't hate practicing. I resist it. The goddess of procrastination can seduce me by lifting one eyebrow. After decades of practicing or avoiding the same, walking over to the piano remains the hardest part.

Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first.

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.

To everything (turn, turn, turn) There is a season (turn, turn, turn) And a time for every purpose under heaven.

A time to gain, a time to lose A time to rend, a time to sew A time of love, a time of hate A time of peace... I swear it's not too late.

Every time I read the paper those old feelings come on. We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on.

I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

Any damn fool can get complicated. It takes genius to attain simplicity.

In the largest sense, every work of art is protest. … A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it. … A hymn is a controversial song — sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out. …

Participation - that's what's gonna save the human race.

The nice thing about poetry is that you’re always stretching the definitions of words. Lawyers and scientists and scholars of one sort or another try to restrict the definitions, hoping that they can prevent people from fooling each other. But that doesn’t stop people from lying.

Cezanne painted a red barn by painting it ten shades of color: purple to yellow. And he got a red barn. Similarly, a poet will describe things many different ways, circling around it, to get to the truth.

My father also had a nice little simile. He said, “The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. And you can’t lay your hand on it. All you do is circle around and point, and say, ‘It’s in there somewhere.