Woody Guthrie > Quotes

“Take it easy, but take it.”
― Woody Guthrie

“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”
― Woody Guthrie

“This machine kills fascists.”
― Woody Guthrie

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”
― Woody Guthrie

“As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.”
― Woody Guthrie

“Anyone who uses more than two chords is just showing off.”
― Woody Guthrie

“Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.”
― Woody Guthrie

“The world is filled with people who are no longer needed -- and who try to make slaves of all of us -- and they have their music and we have ours.”
― Woody Guthrie

“If you walk across my camera I will flash the world your story.”
― Woody Guthrie

“I know the police cause you trouble
They cause trouble everywhere
But when you die and go to heaven
You find no policeman there”
― Woody Guthrie

“The world is filled with people who are no longer needed. And who try to make slaves of all of us. And they have their music and we have ours. Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare. And without their music and ideological miscarriages to compare our songs of freedom to, we'd not have any opposite to compare music with --- and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we'd never know its speed, its power....”
― Woody Guthrie

“Left wing, right wing, chicken wing.”
― Woody Guthrie

“I ain't a Communist necessarily, but I have been in the red all my life.”
― Woody Guthrie

“All of you cowboys, fight for your land.”
― Woody Guthrie

“All of my words, if not well put nor well taken, are well meant.”
― Woody Guthrie

“You will never find peace with these fascists
You'll never find friends such as we
So remember that valley of Jarama
And the people that'll set that valley free.
From this valley they say we are going
Do not hasten to bid us adieu
Even though we lost the battle at Jarama
We'll set this valley before we're through.
All this world is like this valley called Jarama
So green and so bright and so fair
No fascists can dwell in our valley
Nor breathe in our new freedoms air.”
― Woody Guthrie

“If you want to learn something, just steal it.”
― Woody Guthrie

“I’d give my life just to lay my head tonight on a bed of California stars”
― Woody Guthrie

“Do Re Mi
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see,
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi”
― Woody Guthrie

“Jesus don’t care if you call it socialism or communism, or just me and you.”
― Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory

“All of my words, if not well put or well taken, are well meant.”
― Woody Guthrie

“All of this talking about what’s up in the sky, or down in hell, for that matter, isn’t half as important as what’s right here, right now, right in front of your eyes. Things are tough. Folks broke. Kids hungry. Sick. Everything. And people has got to have more faith in one another, believe in each other. There’s a spirit of some kind we’ve all got. That’s got to draw us all together.”
― Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory

“Then I got a little braver and made up songs telling what I thought was wrong and how to make it right, songs that said what everybody in the country was thinking. And this has held me ever since.”
― Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory

“I'm down here looking at the Potomac River; they say George Washington threw a silver dollar across it once. It looks a little bit too far for me to do that trick, but maybe he could. After all, a dollar went further in those days.”
― Woody Guthrie

“We’re to blame because we let them steal,” she told him.
“Let them? We caused ‘em to steal?”
“Yes. We caused them to steal. Penny at a time. Nickel at a time. Dime. A quarter. A dollar. We were easy going. We were good-natured. We didn’t want money just for the sake of having money. We didn’t want other folks’ money If it meant they had to do without. We smiled across their counters a penny at a time. We smiled in through their cages a nickel at a time. We handed a quarter out our front door. We handing them money along the street. We signed our names to their old papers. We didn’t want money, so we didn’t steal money, and we spoiled them, we petted them, and we humored them. We let them steal from us. We knew that they were hooking us. We knew it. We knew when they jacked up their prices. We knew when they cut down on the price of our work. We knew that. We knew they were stealing. We taught them how to steal. We let them. We let them think they they could cheat us because we are just plain old common everyday people. They got the habit.”
“They really got the habit,” Tike said.
“Like dope. Like whiskey. Like tobacco. Like snuff. Like morphine or opium or old smoke of some kind. They got the regular habit of taking us for damned old silly fools.”
House of Earth Woody Guthrie”
― Woody Guthrie, House of Earth

“Jesus don't care if you call it socialism or communism, or just me and you.”
― Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory

“Yes, I’d give my life to lay my head tonight
On a bed of California stars”
― Woody Guthrie

“Jesus don't care if you call it socialism of communism, or just me and you”
― Woody Guthrie, Bound For Glory

“I’m one walker that’s stood way up and looked way down acrost aplenty of pretty sights in all their veiled and nakedest season. Thumbing it. Hitching it. Walking and talking it. Chalking it. Marking it. Sighting it and hearing it. Seeing and feeling and breathing and smelling it in, sucking down me, rubbing it all in the pores of my skin, and the wind between my eyes knocking honey in my comb….”
― Woody Guthrie

“Chorine My Sheba Queen”

Chorine! Chorine! Chorine!
Your eyes are like my sky
Wherever you go I want you to know
Its there my love will fly!

I miss my sweet Chorine
Most everywhere I go,
And I tell you now cause I want you to know
She’s the best I ever saw

Chorine your form’s divine,
Chorine your heart so true;
If you are lookin’ for a heart of gold,
Chorine will do, do, do.

My lovely sweet Chorine,
I love you best of all;
In early spring when Lovebirds sing
Or in the dreary fall!

Chorine! Chorine! Chorine!
Has anybody seen Chorine
She took off running like a new machine
Chorine my Sheba Queen

Woody Guthrie, as performed by Jim James, Jay Farrar, Will Johnson & Anders Parker, New Multitudes (2012)_”
― Woody Guthrie