Pete Seeger Quotes

35 Sourced Quotes

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. …

Pete Seeger
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.

Pete Seeger
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.

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

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

Pete Seeger
Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Pete Seeger
"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.

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

Pete Seeger
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.

Pete Seeger
Where have all the flowers gone?
The girls have picked them every one.
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Pete Seeger
If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning,
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.
I'd hammer out danger,
I'd hammer out a warning,
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

Pete Seeger
If singing were all that serious, frowning would make you sound better.

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

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

Pete Seeger
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Pete Seeger
Shh. Listen to the sounds that surround you. Notice the pitches, the volume, the timbre, the many lines of counterpoint. As light taught Monet to paint, the earth may be teaching you music.

Pete Seeger
Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.

Pete Seeger
There is a big, beautiful world that could be destroyed by selfishness and foolishness. We musicians have it within our power to help save it. In a small way, every single one of us counts.

Pete Seeger
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.

Pete Seeger
This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.

Pete Seeger
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.

Pete Seeger
I have been singing folksongs of America and other lands to people everywhere. I am proud that I never refused to sing to any group of people because I might disagree with some of the ideas of some of the people listening to me. I have sung for rich and poor, for Americans of every possible political and religious opinion and persuasion, of every race, color, and creed. The House committee wished to pillory me because it didn't like some few of the many thousands of places I have sung for.

Pete Seeger
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky;
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one, and a pink one,
And a blue one, and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky,
and they all look just the same.

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

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

Pete Seeger
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.

Pete Seeger
Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

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

Pete Seeger
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.

Pete Seeger
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.

Pete Seeger