Top 190 Quotes & Sayings by Pete Seeger

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Pete Seeger.

Last updated on September 17, 2024.

Peter Seeger was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers' rights, and environmental causes.

American - Musician | May 3, 1919 - January 27, 2014

Source: Wikipedia

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

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

Pete Seeger

I live in the country, so I get a fair amount of exercise. We heat our house with wood, so I split wood. We also live on a steep hill, and I have to rake and put in cross-stitches to keep the road from washing out when there's a big rain.

Pete Seeger

I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches, and I do this voluntarily.

Pete Seeger

When you're facing an opponent over a broad front, you don't aim for the opponent's strong points, important though they may be. Pick a little outpost that you can capture and win. And then you find another place that you can capture and win it, and then you move slowly toward the big places.

Pete Seeger

I believe that my choosing my present course I do no dishonor to them, or to those who may come after me.

Pete Seeger

The good and bad are all tangled up together. American popular music is loved around the world because of its African rhythm. But that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for slavery.

Pete Seeger

I keep reminding people that an editorial in rhyme is not a song. A good song makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you think.

Pete Seeger

I came along and was a teenager in the Depression, and nobody had jobs. So I went out hitchhiking, when I met a man named Woody Guthrie. He was the single biggest part of my education.

Pete Seeger

My mother was a very good violinist; my father was a musicologist and spent most of his life in academia.

Pete Seeger

I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, make me less of an American.

Pete Seeger

I try to sing many different kinds of songs. If I sing a batch of humorous songs, I'll throw in a deadly serious song. Or if I'm singing too many serious songs, I'll throw in a ridiculous song, to mix it up.

Pete Seeger

I'm still a communist in the sense that I don't believe the world will survive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer - I think that the pressures will get so tremendous that the social contract will just come apart.

Pete Seeger

Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.

Pete Seeger

Historically, I believe I was correct in refusing to answer their questions.

Pete Seeger

Songs won't save the planet, but neither will books or speeches.

Pete Seeger

If there's something wrong, speak up!

Pete Seeger

But I decline to say who has ever listened to them, who has written them, or other people who have sung them.

Pete Seeger

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

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.

Pete Seeger

I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life.

Pete Seeger

I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

Pete Seeger

I feel that my whole life is a contribution.

Pete Seeger

When you play the 12-string guitar, you spend half your life tuning the instrument and the other half playing it out of tune.

Pete Seeger

Being generous of spirit is a wonderful way to live.

Pete Seeger

I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody.

Pete Seeger

I've found that festivals are a relatively painless way to meet people and make a few points that need making, without having to hit them over the head with too many speeches.

Pete Seeger

I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung, and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me, and the people I have known.

Pete Seeger

One of the things I'm most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties.

Pete Seeger

Down through the centuries, this trick has been tried by various establishments throughout the world. They force people to get involved in the kind of examination that has only one aim and that is to stamp out dissent.

Pete Seeger

I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.

Pete Seeger

I fought for peace in the fifties.

Pete Seeger

You'd be surprised how many stupid mistakes I've made. I make stupid mistakes all the time, and some of them have been very big stupid mistakes.

Pete Seeger

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.

Pete Seeger

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

Pete Seeger

According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes, I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something, I'm listening to God.

Pete Seeger

I came from an intellectual family. Most were doctors, preachers, teachers, businessmen. My grandfather was a small businessman. His father was an abolitionist doctor, and his father was an immigrant from Germany.

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 get people to sing with me.

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.

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

I think folk music helps reinforce your sense of history. An old song makes you think of times gone by.

Pete Seeger

My job, is to show folks there's a lot of good music in this world, and if used right it may help to save the planet.

Pete Seeger

Every time I'm in the woods, i feel like I'm in church.

Pete Seeger

I feel most spiritual when I'm out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it's all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God.

Pete Seeger

Parents are the hardest-working members of the population. But they do it for the highest wages. Kisses.

Pete Seeger

The first country conquered by any dictator is his own country.

Pete Seeger

If there's a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things. The powers-that-be can break up any big thing they want. They can corrupt it or co-opt it from the inside, or they can attack it from the outside. But what are they going to do about 10 million little things? They break up two of them, and three more like them spring up!

Pete Seeger

The first step in solving a problem is admitting there is a problem to be solved.

Pete Seeger

I tell kids, don't trust the media. The media with their emphasis on fame is helping to destroy this country, helping destroy the human race. It's the plug-in drug.

Pete Seeger

If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.

Pete Seeger

Get people to sing together and they'll act together too.

Pete Seeger

Most scientists know what needs to be done to save our Earth. But the politicians don't listen to them. They will listen to popular pressure; the people got to supply that.

Pete Seeger

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

Pete Seeger

And when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.

Pete Seeger

Participation - that's what's gonna save the human race.

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

A productive mistake is: (1) made in the service of mission and vision; (2) acknowledged as a mistake; (3) learned from; (4) considered valuable; (5) shared for the benefit of all.

Pete Seeger

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

Pete Seeger

This world is so full of hypocrisy, the only way you can be honest is to be a hermit.

Pete Seeger

And there's a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don't grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don't grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you've done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of?

Pete Seeger

Top 190 Quotes & Sayings by Pete Seeger

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