A Quote by Arlo Guthrie

My only description for me is that there's no throwaway people. That's the creed that I live by. It doesn't matter if I'm singing or not. That's the kind of person that my father and mother wanted me to be. The end obligation is to make people feel good about who they are.
Creating emotion was what my career was all about. I wanted people to laugh at me; I wanted people to cry with me. I wanted people to feel good or to think about something when they watched me. I think that's why, even not being an Olympic champion, I have such a huge following around the world.
I wanted to live. For the father and brother who I never knew and for my mother who was cheated of a life of happiness. I wanted to live for them. And I wanted to live for me.
My four sons all knew I was a Jew, but they were allowed to be whatever they wanted to be. The only thing important to me was that they be good people who help other people, because all religion should try to make you a better person and a more caring person. Whenever religion does that for you, it's a good religion.
To me it's a two-way street. They're good to me, and I'm good to them. It's a natural thing for me to love people, and I think people sense it. ... I am secure with the kind of person I am. I don't feel like I'm better than anyone, but I'm just as good as anyone.
People love that kind of beginning, middle, and end. They like that comfort of turning on the TV week-to-week and being entertained with a good story. There's nothing wrong with TV franchises because, first of all, they're successful. They just make people feel good and hopefully make people think about other people.
I'm not a camp, throwaway queen; I'm not in Neverland. I'm not Jennifer Lopez with three people to pluck my eyebrows. I've made myself what I want to be - not everybody's cup of tea. And people wanna have a look at me. I fully accept that. People have always wanted to have a look at me.
The first thing I ever heard about Barack Obama was that he had a white mother and a black father. Interestingly, the person who informed me of this spoke only matter-of-factly, with no hint of the gossip's wicked delight.
I don't understand people who just live to exist, live to be OK. Live to be regular, live to be average. It doesn't make any sense to me. I live to be the best. I don't live to be good. You only get one life, and I live to be great. I live to be special.
Davy once asked me if I thought it was better to be a has-been than a never was, but maybe it doesn't make much of a difference. In the end, people are just people, and the only things that matter are whether they are good or bad, loving or unloving, loved or unloved.
Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone's singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That's the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.
I think I got from my father and my mother a sense of morality, of the do's and don't's in society; the notion that good people don't do this; good people are responsible, good people participate in community, and good people vote, good people own land. These were things I heard from my father's pulpit.
My father was an amazing man. No person is perfect, and no father-son relationship is perfect. He wanted me to live my life my way and never think about what he would have done or what he would have wanted to do.
Listening closely to songs these days, there's a lot of lazy songwriting where people get away with it. I don't want to be too critical about it. But I also feel like I wanted to say something a bit different from just being a musician and singing about yourself. Ultimately, that's not really interesting to me. Even when I was a kid, I was interested in observing people and maybe making my own stories. That kind of reflects in my music.
I've got two older sisters, which I think was the best thing, but also the worst thing. They dressed me up like a girl, but at the same time I think they taught me a lot of what they experienced and what they lived through, and passed that on to me as a young man and influenced how I approached not only women, but people. I got very lucky with the family I was born into. From my older sisters to my mother and father, they're just good, kind-hearted people.
My mother was a Bible student, and when I was a youngster, both my mother and father would say, 'If people would only live by the Golden Rule, there wouldn't be the problems that there are.' In other words, 'treat people the way you want to be treated.' If somebody mistreats you, two wrongs won't make a right.
At 15 [my father] revolted against his father like any teenager, and said, "I'm out of here! What are you doing to me?" He thought he wouldn't be involved in that kind of stuff for the rest of his life. He just wanted to make money. He was one of those people who took over the family responsibility. His own father was pretty irresponsible with money and borrowed from people all the time.
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