Pete Seeger quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Pete Seeger on Wise Famous Quotes.

Like most teachers, I'm just another sower of seeds.

Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

RULERS should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung.

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.

Looking back, I think I tried to be too eclectic. Sometimes I'd sing thirty songs, and fifteen of them were not in English.

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

Do-so is more important than say-so.

Plagiarism is basic to all culture

I believe that my choosing my present course I do no dishonor to them, or to those who may come after me.

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

I guess I've learned more from the Clearwater than anything else. All I did was help to plant a seed, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

I never intended to make a living from music. That's the funny thing. I wanted to be a journalist.

I'd really rather put songs on people's lips than in their ears.

The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.

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 get people to sing with me.

The world will be solved by millions of small things.

I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things.

Sometimes you find an old tune so good you can use it several times for different purposes.

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.

The key to the future of the world, is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.

I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. All you can do is circle around and say it's somewhere in there.

My mother was a very good violinist; my father was a musicologist and spent most of his life in academia.

Some may find them merely diverting melodies. Others may find them incitements to Red revolution. And who will say if either or both is wrong? Not I.

I feel that my whole life is a contribution.

Music does affect your opinions. Plato is supposed to have said "It's very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music into the republic."

In a world of private property, if something isn't owned by somebody, it's going to be misused by somebody else.

Many Americans knew their lives and their souls were being struggled for, and they fought for it. And I felt I should carry on.

Parents are the hardest-working members of the population. But they do it for the highest wages. Kisses.

When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

It was only through the years that I realized what an absolutely extraordinarily thoughtful person Dr. King was.

Did you ever want something really bad and then when you finally got it all you could do was stand there and grin at it?

I used to agree with Kurt Vonnegut, who said that the human race has a snowball's chance in hell of being around a hundred years from now.

My mother playing the violin and my father and grandfather playing the piano, classical stuff.

Realize that little things lead to bigger things.

Throughout history the leaders of the countries have been very particular about what songs should be sung. We know the power of songs.

My job, is to show folks there's a lot of good music in this world, and if used right it may help to save the planet.

If I had an axe on the evening at Newport when [Dylan] broke out the electric guitar, I'd have cut his cable.

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.

Being generous of spirit is a wonderful way to live.

You can't work on everything all the time, so start where you are.

The first country conquered by any dictator is his own country.

The world would never amount to a hill of beans if people didn't use their imaginations to think of the impossible.

Work in nightclubs was interesting. There were interesting people and places, but by and large, the commercial music experience.

Get people to sing together and they'll act together too.

I was never enthusiastic about being somebody who was supposed to be silent about being a member of something.

I dreamed I saw a mighty room, the room was filled with men. And the paper they were signing said they'd never fight again.

Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.

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.

Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them.

I fought for peace in the fifties.

Food is one of the great organizing tools.

Songs won't save the planet, but neither will books or speeches.

Singing with children in the schools has been the most rewarding experience of my life.

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.

My dad, the old professor, used to say, 'Never get into an argument about what's folk music and what isn't.'

This world is so full of hypocrisy, the only way you can be honest is to be a hermit.

To everything there is a season.

Historically, I believe I was correct in refusing to answer their questions.

It's been my belief that learning how to do something in your hometown is the most important thing.

But if two and two and fifty make a million, ...

If there is a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things.

I keep reminding people that an editorial in rhyme is not a song. A good song makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you think.

Be wary of great leaders.

You have a right to your opinion and I've got a right to mine. Period.

I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.

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.

Music has always had the ability to comfort and inspire.

This banjo surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.

The real meaning of courage was the personal sacrifice of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.

When you play the 12-string guitar, you spend half your life tuning the instrument and the other half playing it out of tune.

Hope that there are many, many small leaders.

I write a song because I want to. I think the moment you start writing it to make money, you're starting to kill yourself artistically.

One of the things I'm most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties.

All songwriters are links in a chain.

My mother gave me a ukulele at age eight, and I sang the popular tunes of the day.

The world will be saved by people fighting for their homes.

Not everybody has to sing the melody.

It's a terrible thing being a patriarch. I don't even have a gray beard. But people keep calling me up for advice.

Every time I'm in the woods, i feel like I'm in church

Anybody who wants to learn everything is pretty stupid. You learn what you can.

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

If you love this land of the free, bring them home, bring them home, Bring them back from overseas.

A good song reminds us what we're fighting for.

How can you save the world you have not seen if you can't save the community you have seen?

My father, Charles Seeger, got me into the Communist movement. He backed out around '38. I drifted out in the 50's.

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.

Any idiot can be complicated. It takes a genius to be simple.

I think folk music helps reinforce your sense of history. An old song makes you think of times gone by.

Some folklorists just collected dead bones from one graveyard, only to bury them in another, their library.

Education is what you get when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.

It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

You'd be surprised how many stupid mistakes I've made. I make stupid mistakes all the time, and some of them have been very big stupid mistakes.