Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Woody Guthrie
22 quotes
“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don't give a darn. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Message on mimeographed copies of lyrics distributed to fans in the 1930s, as quoted by Pete Seeger in an NPR interview "Pete Seeger remembers Woody" (1996)
“Ever'body might be just one big soul, Well it looks that a-way to me. Everywhere that you look, in the day or night, That's where I'm a-gonna be, Ma, That's where I'm a-gonna be.Wherever little children are hungry and cry, Wherever people ain't free. Wherever men are fightin' for their rights, That's where I'm a-gonna be, Ma. That's where I'm a-gonna be.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tom Joad" (1940), a ballad based on the character Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
“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 (1912–1967) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Final stanza of manuscript notes for "God Blessed America" which later became "This Land Is Your Land" (23 February 1940)
“All you can write is what you see.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comment written on his first manuscript notes for "God Blessed America" (23 February 1940); quoted in Woody Guthrie: A Life (1981) by Joe Klein, p. 136
“THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A message he would variously write or post on his guitar, beginning in 1941.
“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 (1912–1967) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pastures of Plenty" (1941)
“I'm blowing, and just as wild and whirling as you are, and lots of times I've been picked up, throwed down, and picked up; but 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 (1912–1967) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bound For Glory (1943). QUoted in
“No matter how bad the wicked world has hurt you, in the long run, there is something gained, and it is all for the best … 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, a working machine, and any song that says, the pleasures I have seen in all of my trouble, are the things I never can get — don't worry — the human race will sing this way as long as there is a human to race. The human race is a pretty old place.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notes about Music" (29 March 1946) also quoted in Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (2004) by Ed Cray
“Let me be known as just the man that told you something you already knew.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notes about Music" (29 March 1946), quoted in "Walt Whitman and Woody Guthrie : American Proghet-singers and their People" in: Journal of American Studies (April 1990), p. 55
“Okemah was one of the singiest, square dancingest, drinkingest, yellingest, preachingest, walkingest, talkingest, laughingest, cryingest, shootingest, fist fightingest, bleedingest, gamblingest, gun, club and razor carryingest of our ranch towns and farm towns, because it blossomed out into one of our first Oil Boom Towns.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pastures Of Plenty: A Self Portrait (1990), p. 3
“I ain't a communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Woody Guthrie" by Steve Earle in The Nation (21 July 2003)
“This land is your land, this land is my land From California to the New York Island From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land is made for you and me.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I go walking this ribbon of highway I see above me the endless skyway And all around me the wind keeps saying: This land is made for you and me.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the sun came shining as I was strolling, And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, As the fog was lifting a voice come chanting: This land was made for you and me.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm just a lonesome traveler, The Great Historical Bum. Highly educated from history I have come. I built the Rock of Ages, 'twas in the Year of One And that was about the biggest thing that man had ever done. I worked in the Garden of Eden, that was the year of two, Joined the apple pickers union, I always paid my due; I'm the man that signed the contract to raise the rising sun, And that was about the biggest thing that man had ever done”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd 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 (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I better quit my talking now; I told you all I know, But please remember, pardner, wherever you may go, I'm older than your old folks, and I'm younger than the young, And I'm about the biggest thing that man has ever done.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm gonna tell all you fascists, you may be surprised People all over this world are getting organized You're bound to lose You fascists are bound to lose Race hatred cannot stop us, this one thing I know Poll tax and Jim Crow and greed have got to go You're bound to lose You fascists are bound to lose ... People of every color marching side by side Marching across these fields where a million fascists died You're bound to lose You fascists are bound to lose ... I'm going into this battle, take my union gun Gonna end this world of slavery before this war is won You're bound to lose You fascists are bound to lose”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: All You Fascists (1944)
“I have hoped as many hopes and dreamed so many dreams, seen them swept aside by weather, and blown away by men, washed away in my own mistakes, that — I use to wonder if it wouldn't be better just to haul off and quit hoping. Just protect my own inner brain, my own mind and heart, by drawing it up into a hard knot, and not having any more hopes or dreams at all. Pull in my feelings, and call back all of my sentiments — and not let any earthly event move me in either direction, either cause me to hate, to fear, to love, to care, to take sides, to argue the matter at all — and, yet … there are certain good times, and pleasures that I never can forget, no matter how much I want to, because the pleasures, and the displeasures, the good times and the bad, are really all there is to me. And these pleasures that you cannot ever forget are the yeast that always starts working in your mind again, and it gets in your thoughts again, and in your eyes again, and then, all at once, no matter what has happened to you, you are building a brand new world again, based and built on the mistakes, the wreck, the hard luck and trouble of the old one.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notes about Music" (29 March 1946) also quoted in A Race of Singers: Whitman's Working-Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen (2000) by Bryan K. Garman, p. 244
“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. … I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement quoted in Prophet Singer: The Voice And Vision of Woody Guthrie (2007) by Mark Allan Jackson. There are a few slight variants of this statement, which seems to have originated in a performance monologue.
“This Land is My Land (1993), a picture book written and illustrated by the Canadian Cree artist George Littlechild, ... refers to Woody Guthrie's Depression-era song, "This Land Is Your Land," which is far from an unproblematic expression of patriotic love for country but (especially in its seldom-sung fourth and sixth verses) ironizes the line "This land was made for you and me" by pointing to distinctions between those who have access to the bounty of the land and those who do not. Through his intertextual reference to Woody Guthrie's song, Littlechild acknowledges traditions of resistance in white culture, even as he draws attention to the effects of colonization upon Native Americans.”
Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source