Joan Baez quotes

Action is the antidote to despair.
-- Joan Baez

#Inspirational #Happiness #Courage

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
-- Joan Baez

#Friendship #Relationship #Money

I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.
-- Joan Baez

#War #Jail #Trying

I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?
-- Joan Baez

#Witty #Humble #Humility

Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job.
-- Joan Baez

#Jobs #World #Changing The World

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.
-- Joan Baez

#Adversity #White #Despair

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.
-- Joan Baez

#Heart #Soldier #Mind

Nonviolence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence.
-- Joan Baez

#Violence #Bigger #Nonviolence

I was writing "Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was.
-- Joan Baez

#Song #Writing #Thinking

I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations - some large and some small.
-- Joan Baez

#Thinking #People #Situation

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.
-- Joan Baez

#Men #Giving #Feminist

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
-- Joan Baez

#Death #Peace #Military

If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.
-- Joan Baez

#People #Firsts #Labels

The point of nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. A platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to stand.
-- Joan Baez

#Strong #Peace #Men

As long as one keeps searching, the answers will come.
-- Joan Baez

#Kindness #Thoughtful #Long

That's all nonviolence is - organized love.
-- Joan Baez

#Peace #Organized #Nonviolence

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
-- Joan Baez

#Music #Song #Writing

We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.
-- Joan Baez

#Soldier #Pacifist

The point on nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink.
-- Joan Baez

#Strong #Nonviolence

Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.
-- Joan Baez

#Noise #Sanity

Living so fully, I can't imagine what any drug could do for me.
-- Joan Baez

#Drug #Imagine

We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood.
-- Joan Baez

#Foundation #Violence #Sides

My dread is for my show to be a nostalgia act. So the key to it is how do we keep it fresh?
-- Joan Baez

#Keys #Nostalgia #Dread

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.
-- Joan Baez

#Song #Writing #Protest

People say I'm such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I'm a realist.
-- Joan Baez

#People #Realist #Pessimist

There's a consensus out that it's OK to kill when your government decides who to kill. If you kill inside the country you get in trouble. If you kill outside the country, right time, right season, latest enemy, you get a medal.
-- Joan Baez

#Country #War #Government

Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it is really God - playing music in his favourite cathedral in heaven - shattering stained glass - playing a gigantic organ - thundering on the keys - perfect harmony - perfect joy.
-- Joan Baez

#Dark #Animal #Keys

Seeing you sleeping peacefully on your back among your stuffed ducks, bears and basset hounds, would remind me that no matter how good the next day might be, certain moments were gone forever because we could not go backwards in time.
-- Joan Baez

#Children #Sleep #Ducks

My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging in slow motion.
-- Joan Baez

#Life #Fall #Littles

If you swing both ways, you really swing. I just figure you double your pleasure.
-- Joan Baez

#Swings #Way #Pleasure

To love means you also trust.
-- Joan Baez

#Love #Mean #Love Means

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.
-- Joan Baez

#Inspirational #Positive #Death

Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.
-- Joan Baez

#Ipods #Opera #Littles

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.
-- Joan Baez

#Peace #Organization #Violence

If you're gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up.
-- Joan Baez

#Music #Meaningful #Song

Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow. You special, miraculous, unrepeatable, fragile, fearful, tender, lost, sparkling ruby emerald jewel, rainbow splendor person. It's up to you.
-- Joan Baez

#Morning #Jewels #Rainbow

Peace might sell, but who's buying?
-- Joan Baez

#Might #Buying

My father was a physicist and also an activist. My first public protest was with my dad at Stanford. I came by all that honestly.
-- Joan Baez

#Dad #Father #Firsts

I'm lucky to have met so many people who have been involved in peace and who have been peace prize winners.
-- Joan Baez

#People #Lucky #Winner

As long as we keep searching, the answers come.
-- Joan Baez

#Adventure #Long #Answers

Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow.
-- Joan Baez

#Morning #Sorrow #May

I was trying to disturb the war.
-- Joan Baez

#War #Trying

I've been obsessed with stopping people from blowing each other's brains out since I was ten.
-- Joan Baez

#People #Brain #Stopping

Sometimes I think that it is enough to say that if we don't sit down and shut up once in a while we'll lose our minds even earlier than we had expected. Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.
-- Joan Baez

#Depression #Thinking #Mind

We both know what memories can bring / They bring diamonds and rust.
-- Joan Baez

#Memories #Rust #Diamond

The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10. Non-violence.
-- Joan Baez

#Foundation #Violence #Belief

I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don't know what's going to rise from the ruins.
-- Joan Baez

#People #Ruins #Individual

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.
-- Joan Baez

#Hardest #Oneself

Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.
-- Joan Baez

#Answers #Hypothetical

The search is in the doing.
-- Joan Baez

#Deeds

I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of rage and sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world.
-- Joan Baez

#Peace #Suffering #Sorrow

To sing is to love and affirm, to fly and to soar, to coast into the hearts of the people who listen to tell them that life is to live, that love is there, that nothing is a promise, but that beauty exists, and must be hunted for and found.
-- Joan Baez

#Heart #Love Is #People

Now I know I understand that it was Sgt. Pepper's Band, that put the sixties into song, where have all the heroes gone?
-- Joan Baez

#Song #Hero #Sgt Pepper

God must have something to do with joy ... and with sadness.
-- Joan Baez

#God #Sadness #Joy

Put tattoos all up and down our thighs, do anything our parents would despise. Take uppers, downers, blues, and reds and yellows, our brains are turning into jello.
-- Joan Baez

#Tattoo #Reality #Parent

Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A fullblown storm where everything changes.
-- Joan Baez

#Nature #Storm #Things Change

There is chaos. There's bloodshed. There's carnage.
-- Joan Baez

#Chaos #Bloodshed #Carnage