Willie Nelson Quotes

57 Sourced Quotes

I started it in 1973 to bring together different kinds of people, and that's still what we do. It's people drinking beer, smoking pot and finding out that they have things in common and don't really hate each other. Music gives people a chance to enjoy something together.

Willie Nelson
I started learning my lessons in Abbot Texas, where I was born in 1933. My sister Bobbie and I were raised by our grandparents [...] We never had enough money, and Bobbie and I started working at an early age to help the family get by. That hard work included picking cotton. [...] Picking cotton is hard and painful work, and the most lasting lesson I learned in the fields was that I didn't want to spend my life picking cotton.

Willie Nelson
Biodiesel seems to be the answer to a lot of our prayers. Not only can it help the U.S. economy, our unwanted dependence on foreign oil, and the gasping environment, it could also help the family farmers out of this tragic dilemma they have found themselves in through no fault of their own.

Willie Nelson
As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn't in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics.

Willie Nelson
Sometimes you're fooling around on the guitar and suddenly you just played a piece of a new song and it wakes you up. You think, What was that? I just wrote a song. Of course, then you can't remember it.

Willie Nelson
When I was out in the bars drinking and fighting I was a little bit less of a peacemaker than I would be if I'd had a coupla hits of a joint and gone and laid down somewhere.

Willie Nelson
I was raised in the cotton fields around Abbott, Texas. There were African Americans and Mexican Americans and we listened to their music all the time.

Willie Nelson
I have more dumb luck thank anybody I know. There must be a convey of guardian angels working twenty-four hours a day looking after me[...] Like the night I first got to Nashville that I laid down in the middle of Broadway, waiting to get run over. It didn't happen [...] I could swear they were keeping me alive just to see what I'd get next, I'm glad they feel that way. I'm trying to help them a little more this days.

Willie Nelson
It didn't take long for me to realize that writing, performing and singing songs was what I was meant to do, but what other people thought was an entirely different issue. If I had to break it down, I'd say about 99 percent of the people in my life were telling me I wasn't going to make it. All that adversity and lack of faith ended up just strengthening my own convictions. All that negativity really helped me in the end, because there's no better inspiration for doing something than having somebody say that you can't do it.

Willie Nelson
Anybody can be unhappy. We can all be hurt. You don't have to be poor to need something or somebody. Rednecks, hippies, misfits — we're all the same. Gay or straight? So what? It doesn't matter to me. We have to be concerned about other people, regardless. I don't like seeing anybody treated unfairly. It sticks in my craw. I hold on to the values from my childhood.

Willie Nelson
I don't think any person has any special knowledge about what God has planned for me and you any more than me and you do.

Willie Nelson
(Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience.

Willie Nelson
You'll never get ahead by blaming your problems on other people.

Willie Nelson
We are the same. There is no difference anywhere in the world. People are people. They laugh, cry, feel, and love, and music seems to be the commons denomination that brings us all together. Music cuts through all boundaries and goes right to the soul.

Willie Nelson
I believe that all roads lead to the same place - and that is wherever all roads lead to.

Willie Nelson
How do you stop terrorism when your enemy is scattered in 80 countries?

Willie Nelson
We once had 8 million family farms in the Fifties, and now we're down to less than 2 million and we're still losing them — losing 500 a week.

Willie Nelson
When I left Nashville I went to Texas because that's where I came from, and because I was playing in Texas a lot in different places. And I saw hippies and rednecks drinking beer together and smoking dope together and having a good time together and I knew it was possible to get all groups of people together – long hair, short hair, no hair – and music would bring them together.

Willie Nelson
When you think a negative thought, it releases poison in your system. Next thing you know, you wind up with cancer or other diseases. I try to live in the moment without regrets.

Willie Nelson
I don't remember Moses writing, 'Thou shalt not kill unless you think you have a good reason'.

Willie Nelson
After the terrorist attack we're not supposed to criticize America. It's viewed as unpatriotic. But true patriotism is wanting America to be the best place it can be.

Willie Nelson
In church I was told that if I so much as smoked a cigarette or tasted alcohol, I'd be damned in hell for all eternity[...]it didn't take long for me to start thinking that sounded all wrong [...]I didn't cotton to the idea that your religion should be flaunted to other people. Your religion is for you, and is best kept close to your heart.

Willie Nelson
America was founded as a place for everyone, where everyone has an opportunity. Do we want it to be a place only for the rich? I don't.

Willie Nelson
Are we going to look at poverty, disproportionate wealth and the horrors in the world or ignore them? The poorest places are the ones where terrorism breeds.

Willie Nelson
Legalize weed. It's 50% of what's causing the problems along the border with the drug cartels. A lot of people who sell it want to keep it illegal because that's where the money is.

Willie Nelson
Well, there was a guy, a blacksmith, in Abbott, and he and my granddad both had blacksmith's jobs. I hung around there a lot. And he had a family band. He just let me play because he knew I wanted to work and needed the work. So, I played a guitar in a big polka band with a lot of horns and everything. So, fortunately, no one ever heard me, because I wasn't that great. But I was nine or 10 years old and making eight to 10 dollars a night. So, it was easier than picking cotton.

Willie Nelson
I had gotten up to two, maybe three, packs (of cigarettes) a day. And my lungs were bothering me and I'd had pneumonia two or three times. And I was also smoking pot, and I decided, well, one of them's got to go. And so I took a pack of Chesterfields and took all the Chesterfields out, rolled up 20 big fat ones and put it in there, and I haven't smoked a cigarette since then

Willie Nelson