Pete Seeger > Quotes

“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. ”
― Pete Seeger

“If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.”
― Pete Seeger

“Participation - that's what's gonna save the human race.”
― Pete Seeger

“Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.” — Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year)”
― Pete Seeger

“Once upon a time, wasn’t singing a part of everyday life as much as talking, physical exercise, and religion? Our distant ancestors, wherever they were in this world, sang while pounding grain, paddling canoes, or walking long journeys. Can we begin to make our lives once more all of a piece? Finding the right songs and singing them over and over is a way to start. And when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.”
― Pete Seeger

“The American Indians were Communists. They were. Every anthropologist will tell you they were Communists. No rich, no poor. If somebody needed something the community chipped in.”
― Pete Seeger

“It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.”
― Pete Seeger

“This banjo surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”
― Pete Seeger

“I’ve never sung anywhere without giving the people listening to me a chance to join in - as a kid, as a lefty, as a man touring the U.S.A. and the world, as an oldster. I guess it’s kind of a religion with me. Participation. That’s what’s going to save the human race.”
― Pete Seeger

“A good song reminds us what we're fighting for.”
― Pete Seeger

“Education is what you get when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.”
― Pete Seeger

“The world will be solved by millions of small things.”
― Pete Seeger

“The key to the future of the world, is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.”
― Pete Seeger

“Singing with children in the schools has been the most rewarding experience of my life.”
― Pete Seeger

“The world is like a seesaw out of balance: on one side is a box of big rocks, tilting it its way. On the other side is a box, and a bunch of us with teaspoons, adding a little sand at a time. One day, all of our teaspoons will add up, and the whole thing will tip, and people will say, 'How did it happen so fast?”
― Pete Seeger

“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.”
― Pete Seeger

“Keep your sense of humor. There is a 50-50 chance the world can be saved. You- yes you- might be the grain of sand that tips the scales the right way.”
― Pete Seeger

“Any damn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.”
― Pete Seeger

“Come back to town. Bring your darn ukelele! We don't care anymore!”
― Pete Seeger, Abiyoyo

“I tell people I was in the U.S. Army for three and a half years in WWII -- but what did I mainly do to beat the fascists? Play the banjo.”
― Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies

“[...] our technology and our economic system seem to produce the present bad situation: millions of people feel themselves poor and powerless; millions feel that music is something to be made only by experts.”
― Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies

“Maybe Americans have found it easier to latch on to new traditions because we are uprooted people, and have few deep roots.”
― Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies

“It all boils down to what I would most like to do as a musician. Put songs on people's lips instead of just in their ears.”
― Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: A Singer's Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies

“The stream of the mountains pleases me more than the sea.”
― Pete Seeger

“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.”
― Pete Seeger

“Any damn fool can get complicated. It takes genius to attain simplicity.”
― Pete Seeger

“If it can't be … reused, repaired … then it should be … redesigned or removed from production.”
― Pete Seeger