Woody Guthrie Quotes
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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.
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Life has a habit of not staying hitched. You got to ride it like you find it.
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One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple, by the Relief Office, I saw my people - As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if God blessed America for me.
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I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I aint a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns.
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Uncle Sam took up the challenge in the year of '33 For the farmer and the factory and all of you and me. He said, "Roll along Columbia. You can ramble to the sea, But river while you're ramblin' you can do some work for me."
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Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see, This world is such a great and a funny place to be. Oh, the gamblin' man is rich, an' the workin' man is poor, And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
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I ain't a communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life.
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If you want to learn something, just steal it.
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Okemah was one of the singingest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Towns.
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You can't write a good song about a whorehouse unless you've been in one.
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The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine.
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This machine kills fascists.
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If you play more than two chords, you're showing off.
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I like to write about wherever I happen to be.
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A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is or who's out of work and where the job is or who's broke and where the money is or who's carrying a gun and where the peace is.
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Anyone who used more than three chords is just showing off.
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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.
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It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people
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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 too ugly or too this or too that.
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One day we'll all find out that all of our songs was just little notes in a great big song!
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Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.
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Now as through this world I ramble, I see lots of funny men, Some rob you with a six gun, And some with a fountain pen.
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As I went walking That ribbon of highway I saw above me The endless skyway I saw below me The lonesome valley This land was made for you and me.
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If you walk across my camera I will flash the world your story.
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You oil field workers, come and listen to me I'm goin' to tell you a story about old John D. That company union made a fool out of me. That company union don't charge no dues It leaves you a-singing them Rockefeller blues. That company union made a fool out of me. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin', rollin' over the sea. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin' over the sea.
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It's round the world I've traveled; it's round the world I've roamed; but I've yet to see an outlaw drive a family from its home
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Left wing. Right wing. Chicken wing.
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All you can write is what you see.
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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.
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A song ain't nothing but a conversation fixed up to where you can talk it over and over without getting tired of it.
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