Latest Pete Seeger Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Like most teachers, I'm just another sower of seeds.

  Pete Seeger

  Teacher, Seeds

• I used to agree with Kurt Vonnegut, who said that the human race has a snowball's chance in hell of being around a hundred years from now.

  Pete Seeger

  Years, Race, Chance

• I'd like to be remembered as the sower of seeds. That's the greatest parable in the bible as far as I'm concerned. Some seeds fall in the pathway, get stomped on and don't grow. Some fall on the stones and don't even sprout, but others fall on the ground and multiply a thousand fold.

  Pete Seeger

  Fall, Stones, Pathways

• However, the agricultural revolution took thousands of years, the Industrial Revolution took hundreds, and the information revolution only took decades. So, who knows what's going to happen in the next few decades, especially with the women's revolution.

  Pete Seeger

  Years, Information, Next

• There are many people writing songs. That is absolutely wonderful. Who knows, there may be some kid in diapers and he or she might succeed in capturing in a few dozen words what great writers have spent years trying to say. Just the right word in the right place with the right melody behind it and the right rhythm. It might get around the world inch by inch, and people realize that this world is in danger, that we're in danger. That's the way "This Land Is Your Land" got to be so well known.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Kids, Writing

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• I guess I've learned more from the Clearwater than anything else. All I did was help to plant a seed, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

  Pete Seeger

  Helping, I've Learned, Hell

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• 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

  Country, Kids, Race

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• Some folklorists just collected dead bones from one graveyard, only to bury them in another, their library.

  Pete Seeger

  Library, Bones, Graveyard

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• I still prefer to hear [Bob] Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Father, Use

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• Anybody who wants to learn everything is pretty stupid. You learn what you can.

  Pete Seeger

  Stupid, Want

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• Looking back, I think I tried to be too eclectic. Sometimes I'd sing thirty songs, and fifteen of them were not in English.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Thinking, Fifteen

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• Make the kind of music you love even if you never hear it on the air. This was the basic lesson I'd gotten from Alan [Lomax]. Alan said, Pete, look at all this great music around. You never hear it on the radio, but it's right there, great music.

  Pete Seeger

  Air, Looks, Lessons

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• Work in nightclubs was interesting. There were interesting people and places, but by and large, the commercial music experience.

  Pete Seeger

  Commercial Music, People, Interesting

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

  Pete Seeger

  Father, Definitions, Ancient

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• Now any person who plays an acoustic guitar standing up on stage with a microphone is a folk singer. Some grandmother with a baby in her arms singing a 500-year-old song, well, she's not a folk singer, she's not on stage with a guitar and a microphone. No, she's just an old grandmother singing an old song. The term "folk singer" has gotten warped.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Baby, Grandmother

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• He [Alan Lomax] started right off trying to find people who could introduce folk songs to city people. He found a young actor named Burl Ives and said, "Burl, you know a lot of great country songs learned from your grandmother, don't you know people would love to hear them?" He put on radio programs. He persuaded CBS to dedicate "The School of the Air" for one year to American folk music. He'd get some old sailor to sing an old sea shanty with a cracked voice. Then he'd get me to sing it with my banjo.

  Pete Seeger

  Country, Song, School

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• My mother wanted me to learn how to read music. She'd given fiddles to my two older brothers, but they'd rebelled. I came along and my father said, "Oh, let Peter enjoy himself." What she did was leave musical instruments all around the house. Whistles, marimbas, squeeze boxes, a piano and organ. By age six or seven, I could bang out a simple tune on almost anything. I developed a good ear, so I didn't learn to read music until I taught myself at age eighteen, 'cause I was hearing so many good songs I couldn't possibly remember them all.

  Pete Seeger

  Mother, Song, Brother

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• I learned by transcribing songs out of the Library of Congress collection in Washington where I was working. I got a job when I just turned twenty in 1939 and Alan [Lomax] needed some help. I listened to hundreds of records every week.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Jobs, Library

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• My father urged Alan [Lomax] not to repeat the mistakes of the European folklorists who, a century ago, had collected these peasant songs and then arranged them for part choir and accompanied them on piano, and then told the young people of their country, "Don't change a note, this is our sacred heritage." Father said, whether it's a fiddle tune or a gospel song, learn it right off the record from the people who grew up with it. Don't just learn it from a piece of paper.

  Pete Seeger

  Country, Song, Father

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

• It's been my belief that learning how to do something in your hometown is the most important thing.

  Pete Seeger

  Important, Belief, Hometown

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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

  Pete Seeger

  Admitting, Firsts, Steps

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I was never enthusiastic about being somebody who was supposed to be silent about being a member of something.

  Pete Seeger

  Silent, Members, Enthusiastic

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• It was only through the years that I realized what an absolutely extraordinarily thoughtful person Dr. King was.

  Pete Seeger

  Kings, Thoughtful, Years

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• There's a story behind every old ballad or work song or nonsense song that I ever knew. Sometimes it's a fascinating story. A story of people struggling for freedom, struggling to get along in this old world.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Struggle, People

  Source: www.folkmusicworldwide.com

• It's a terrible thing being a patriarch. I don't even have a gray beard. But people keep calling me up for advice.

  Pete Seeger

  People, Advice, Calling

  Source: www.folkmusicworldwide.com