Top 74 Quotes & Sayings by Bruce Cockburn

If I try to understand what it means to be a Christian, I look at the two instructions that were given in the Bible that are paramount, and those are to love God with all your heart and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That's it.

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music, but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.

It sounds strange to say it, but you can be in a war zone and have a lot of fun. Even though war is essentially pain on all sides, human beings have the capacity to enjoy themselves. The soldiers are mostly young people, full of enthusiasm and energy, and that's an exciting thing for an old guy like me.

I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.

'Each One Lost' I wrote the day after I got home. My week in Afghanistan was a very short trip, but it was a powerful experience.

'Gifts' was just a short little one-verse song that I used to close shows in the '60s.

There was a lot more music than the size of the place would indicate.

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.

I wear my shadows where they're harder to see, but they follow me everywhere. I guess that should tell me I'm travelling toward light.

I'm not a pacifist. I feel that there are situations where fighting is inescapable, but we don't go looking for those things.

I did a lot of writing for a lot of different kinds of bands that I was in and out of during those five years and that left me with a little body of songs that I liked better when I played alone, so I ended up going out solo and very soon made my first album.

I remember when the idea of living to be 40 seemed absurd.

A sane person doesn't think war is a good idea.

I woke up one morning with this song in my head, and the opening line of the song is, 'My name was Richard Nixon, only now I'm a girl.'

We're confronted with great darkness as a species right now as spiritual creatures on this planet. I don't think it's hopeless, and I don't want 'You've Never Seen Everything' to make people feel hopeless. But I think we've got to call a spade a spade.

It's a phobia I have. I never assume I'm going to be able to write another album after I finish one.

The second half of the '60s really was a kind of learning period, in terms of writing, for me.

Since the early '80s, I've found myself in war zones in various parts of the world.

If you don't keep learning and growing, you're going to stagnate.

A sane person doesn't think war is a good idea. I'm not a pacifist. I feel that there are situations where fighting is inescapable, but we don't go looking for those things.

I like to think that if it hadn't gone as well as it has, if I wasn't able to make a living off of playing music, I would still be playing the music. But, of course, I wouldn't likely have had the opportunity to travel, and a lot of the places have inspired songs.

There are some decision-makers in the world whose version of sanity is a little different from what I consider the right one.

I can't imagine my life any other way than it's been.

All I ever thought was, 'I'm going to do this as long as I can, and if I can't get paid at it, I'll be a bum doing it.' And so, here I am.

Abu Ghraib, as bad as it was, can't be compared to what Saddam was doing to people.

Wave the flag, wave the Bible, wave your sex or your business degree, whatever you want, just don't wave that thing at me.

Everybody wants to see justice done, to somebody else.

Most of the time, our deeper, stronger feelings are things we all have in common.

Music itself isn't enough to completely wear down my stash of anger. And I don't have all that much more to be angry about than anyone else. It's not like I was abused as a kid or anything. I had a pretty comfortable childhood with parents who took good care of me. But resentment exists, and some of it goes into the music. Some of it goes into physical activity.

I've been accused of being a little pedantic here and there, but I don't buy that criticism. I'm telling it like I see it. You don't have to buy it. You don't have to like it. You don't have to listen to it at all. I'm not trying to convince people of things, other than the fact that I'm trying to make as vivid as I can my own feelings and experiences.

Male female slave or free; peaceful or disorderly; maybe you and he will not agree; but you need him to show you new ways to see.

There's so many ways in which Canada and America are inextricably connected politically, economically, socially. There's no stepping away. But at the same time, we don't have a say. Canada is a different country. Sometimes I think of it as Finland in the Soviet era. We're totally free, but we're totally free to agree, basically. If we disagree too heartily or over too sensitive an issue, then we pay a price for that.

Politics is a part of life and art is about life. It doesn't mean that all the art has to be about politics - in fact, heaven forbid. But politics is a totally legitimate area of focus for any art, whether it's painting or songwriting or anything else, as much as sex is, as much as spirituality is, as much as any other behavior of people is.

Some people never see the light Till it shines thru bullet holes.

There's roads, and there's roads, And they call. Can't you hear it? Roads of the earth And roads of the spirit The best roads of all Are the ones that aren't certain. One of those is where you'll find me 'Til they drop the big curtain.

Gotta kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight.

A number of Iraqis told us they had welcomed the U.S. forces as liberators initially but in the intervening months, they had come to feel that they had swapped one oppressive regime for another. The Iraqis did exchange one oppression for a lighter kind, in some ways.

Water of life is gonna flow again/changed from the blood of heroes and knaves/Word mercy's gonna have a new meaning/ when we are judged by the children of our slaves.

All these years of thinking, ending up like this: In front of all this beauty, understanding nothing.

Sometimes the best map will not guide you, you can't see what's round the bend. Sometimes the road leads through dark places, sometimes the darkness is your friend

The trouble with normal is it only gets worse.

Lord, spit on our eyes that we may see, how to wake up from this tragedy.

Here's Iraq, where irrigation was invented, where law was invented, where writing was invented. All these things that we consider necessities of civilization started there. And the people who live there damn well know that.

Sometimes I catch myself doing something that I've already done. The more I've done, the more that's likely to happen. Then I just throw it away. I wait until I've got the right way of getting a thing done, which means my songwriting proceeds at a very slow pace. But it's the only way I can really work.

Though chains be of gold, they are chains all the same.

Little round planet in a big universe, sometimes it looks blessed, sometimes it looks cursed. Depends what you look at obviously, but even more it depends on the way that you see.

Anger is energy, and you've got to find a place to put it that works for you.

Once you tie anger and ego together then you're a monster, at least a latent one. So you have to be able to separate those things before you are going to be able to do anything useful with your anger.

Resisting the powers that be, we are keeping things from getting worse than they otherwise might be. And that effort is very much worthwhile.

There is no gap between art and politics.

My models for graceful aging are guys like John Lee Hooker and Mississippi John Hurt, who never stopped working till they dropped, as I fully expect to be doing, and just getting better as musicians and as human beings.

And I'm wondering where the lions are.

One day you're waiting for the sky to fall, The next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all.

The people who have impressed me most - and the closest I've come to having heroes - are the people who have devoted their lives to making things better for others. These are people whose names you never hear, people who work for Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and other humanitarian groups. They're just out there in the world, doing stuff.

Beautiful rocks - beautiful grass Beautiful soil where they both combine Beautiful river - covering sky Never thought of possession, but all this was mine.

We all grow up with anger. It's part of the human condition. But what do you do with that? It seems obvious to me that you've got to use it for something, but you have to separate it from your ego.

My overall responsibility is to be truthful. If people pay money to come and see me, looking for something other than that, then they've made a mistake.

But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight / Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.

Everything that makes a society run is broken in Iraq. The only real structure is the people's own sense of themselves as Iraqis, which was very strong. They're a proud people, and they trace their historic roots way, way back.

When you know even for a moment That it's your time Then you can walk with the power Of a thousand generations