Pete Seeger Quotes - Page 6

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

I came along and was a teenager in the Depression, and nobody had jobs. So I went out hitchhiking, when I met a man named Woody Guthrie. He was the single biggest part of my education.

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.

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

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

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

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

I still prefer to hear [Bob] Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.

There are many people writing songs. That is absolutely wonderful. Who knows, there may be some kid in diapers and he or she might succeed in capturing in a few dozen words what great writers have spent years trying to say. Just the right word in the right place with the right melody behind it and the right rhythm. It might get around the world inch by inch, and people realize that this world is in danger, that we're in danger. That's the way "This Land Is Your Land" got to be so well known.

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

In the sixties, during the Vietnam war, when anarchists and pacifists and socialists, Democrats and Republicans, decent-hearted Americans, all recoiled with horror at the bloodbath, we came together.

I try to sing many different kinds of songs. If I sing a batch of humorous songs, I'll throw in a deadly serious song. Or if I'm singing too many serious songs, I'll throw in a ridiculous song, to mix it up.

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

I live in the country, so I get a fair amount of exercise. We heat our house with wood, so I split wood. We also live on a steep hill, and I have to rake and put in cross-stitches to keep the road from washing out when there's a big rain.

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

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.

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.

At the audition, your assignment is to find something new in the song. Something you've never noticed before. A breath carried over, a thought that ties the whole thing together. Then take the risk and do it.

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.

I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.

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.

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.

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...

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

I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches.