Top 77 Quotes About Woody Guthrie
#1. My father was a painter. There was a lot of singing. We hung around with a lot of folk musicians. My family knew a lot of great folk musicians of the time, like Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Leadbelly. They were all people we knew.
Alan Arkin
#2. Renaissance cowboy/raconteur Pop Wagner ... deadpan funny ... his presence is like meeting Woody Guthrie and Will Rogers riding a single, many colored horse. Pop is a kind of 'textile genius' who is able to spin, at once, both yarn and rope.
Ron Miles
#3. We don't need another Woody. Even Bob Dylan knew he couldn't be Woody Guthrie ... I like Woody Guthrie fine, but I don't need the 50th generation version of it.
Buzz Osborne
#4. It sounds like something from a Woody Guthrie song, but it's true; I was raised in a freight car.
Merle Haggard
#5. I have two mini huskies called Woody Guthrie and Edison Guthrie.
Dhani Harrison
#6. 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
#7. The Gulf Stream waters of Woody Guthrie's famous song were strung with columns of oil that were several miles long.
James Lee Burke
#8. A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.
John Mellencamp
#10. I was a working-class kid from Boston. But I never lost my accent because I felt like that was what I was doing. I didn't have to perform Woody Guthrie like Bob Dylan did in the '60s, I just had to make myself be Eileen Myles and let that be my shield.
Eileen Myles
#11. The fact that they stole their whole shtick from Woody Guthrie and the coal-mining bards. While the alternative nation meows about personal fashion angst, the Appalachian nation still sings about unemployment.
Jim Goad
#12. I can remember back as far as age 8, performing with the Boston Folk Song Society. It was a Woody Guthrie song.
Frank Black
#13. I was in my late 20s, in the process of shaping my musical outlook and what I wanted it to be about, when I first encountered Woody Guthrie.
Bruce Springsteen
#14. My musical heroes are people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie who wrote and sang real songs for real people; for everyone, old, young, and in between.
Tom Chapin
#15. Woody Guthrie was what folks who don't believe in anything would call an anomaly.
Steve Earle
#16. Because Dickens and Dostoyevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind.
Bob Dylan
#17. The spirit of Woody Guthrie lives in the heart of
Chris Chandler.
Peter Yarrow
#18. You'll find God in the church of your choice, you'll find Woody Guthrie in the Brooklyn State Hospital.
Bob Dylan
#19. Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
Steve Earle
#20. What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.
Justin Townes Earle
#21. Even with politics, stuff comes around again. Woody Guthrie would recognize America today.
Billy Bragg
#22. I played around our yard some and talked to the fence posts, sung songs and made the weeds sing ... - WOODY GUTHRIE
Richard Louv
#23. Celtic music is part of the language in Scotland and Ireland, where every kid and grandparent knows those songs, music by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Snow is getting entrenched here. They are part of our cultural language. It's part of a living treasure. It doesn't just belong to a museum.
Rosanne Cash
#24. People were talking about songs of the common man in order to make the common man. With Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, they were so common it was just uncommon.
Arlo Guthrie
#25. In writing songs, I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.
Bob Dylan
#26. You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live ...
Bob Dylan
#27. If Woody Guthrie set the bar for American songwriters, Bob Dylan jumped right over it. No one I know will ever come close to possessing the beauty of melody and the use of language that Dylan shares with us, with ease.
John Mellencamp
#28. I don't think I have any right to say I belong to that [Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan tradition]. I think that's something that eventually maybe you get inducted into. I'm just experimenting.
Justin Townes Earle
#29. Irish fathers still have certain responsibilities, and by the time my two daughters turned seven, they could swim, ride a bike, sing at least one part of a Woody Guthrie song, and recite all of W. B. Yeats's 'The Song of Wandering Aengus.'
Adrian McKinty
#30. I fell in love with folk music at Surprise Lake Camp. It was the songs of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers.
Neil Diamond
#31. Do Re Mi
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see,
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi
Woody Guthrie
#33. Let me be known as just the man that told you something you already knew.
Woody Guthrie
#34. It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people
Woody Guthrie
#35. 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.
Woody Guthrie
#36. 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.
Woody Guthrie
#37. I got started in Oklahoma. That's where I was born. Population down there is one-third Indians, one-third Negroes and one-third white people.
Woody Guthrie
#38. 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.
Woody Guthrie
#40. 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.
Woody Guthrie
#41. 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.
Woody Guthrie
#42. Some men rob you with a six-gun
others rob you with a fountain pen.
Woody Guthrie
#44. I have decided long ago that my songs and ballads would not get the hugs and kisses of the capitalistic experts.
Woody Guthrie
#45. You can't write a good song about a whorehouse unless you've been in one.
Woody Guthrie
#46. One day we'll all find out that all of our songs was just little notes in a great big song!
Woody Guthrie
#47. If you walk across my camera I will flash the world your story.
Woody Guthrie
#48. My eyes has been my camera taking pictures of the world and my songs has been my messages that I tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls ...
Woody Guthrie
#49. 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."
Woody Guthrie
#50. The words are the important thing. Don't worry about tunes. Take a tune, sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you've got a new tune.
Woody Guthrie
#51. A song ain't nothing but a conversation fixed up to where you can talk it over and over without getting tired of it.
Woody Guthrie
#52. There's several ways of saying what's on your mind. And in states and counties where it ain't too healthy to talk too loud, speak your mind, or even vote like you want to, folks have found other ways of getting the word around. One of the mainest ways is by singing.
Woody Guthrie
#53. 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.
Woody Guthrie
#54. Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.
Woody Guthrie
#55. Left wing, chicken wing, it don't make no difference to me.
Woody Guthrie
#56. If you want to learn something, just steal it.
Woody Guthrie
#58. If we fix it so's you can't make money on war, we'll all forget what we're killing folks for.
Woody Guthrie
#59. If you play more than two chords, you're showing off.
Woody Guthrie
#60. Anyone who uses more than two chords is just showing off.
Woody Guthrie
#61. The best way to get to know any bunch of people is to go and listen to their music.
Woody Guthrie
#62. 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
Woody Guthrie
#64. Nobody living can ever stop me. As I go walking my freedom highway. Nobody living can make me turn back. This land was made for you and me.
Woody Guthrie
#65. All about a human being is, it's a great big hoping machine.
Woody Guthrie
#66. Anyone who used more than three chords is just showing off.
Woody Guthrie
#67. 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.
Woody Guthrie
#69. I ain't a Communist necessarily, but I have been in the red all my life.
Woody Guthrie
#70. I love a good man outside the law, just as much as I hate a bad man inside the law.
Woody Guthrie
#71. Life has a habit of not staying hitched. You got to ride it like you find it.
Woody Guthrie
#72. I better quit my talking 'cause I told you all I know But please remember, pardner, wherever you may go The people are building a peaceful world, and when the job is done, That'll be the biggest thing that man has ever done.
Woody Guthrie
#73. I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes. I slept on the ground in the light of the moon. On the edge of the city you'll see us and then, we come with the dust and we go with the wind.
Woody Guthrie
#74. I know the police cause you trouble They cause trouble everywhere But when you die and go to heaven You find no policeman there
Woody Guthrie
#75. I like to write about wherever I happen to be.
Woody Guthrie
#76. 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.
Woody Guthrie
#77. Was a great high wall there that tried to stop me. Was a great big sign there said private Property but on the back side it didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me.
Woody Guthrie
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
