Joan Baez People Quotations

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing.

I think Cindy and the women have impeccable credentials -- no matter how hard people try to slander and assassinate their personalities, it is impeccable credentials. I think they simply can't be not listened to.

I felt very definitely about Crawford, that, whether or not people actually stayed with it, a spark had been lit,

We need to have faith in the people who are giving this movement direction to be smart enough to stay one step ahead of what's coming up next.

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

Back then I was still listening to rhythm and blues, and my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger concert. And it gelled. He made all the sense in the world to me. I got addicted to his albums, and then Belafonte and Odetta - they were the people who seemed to fuse things that were important to me into music. I think Pete the most because he did what he did to the point where he took those enormous risks and then paid for them.

I didn't study anything really. I didn't learn out of the books because I couldn't read music very well, so it is what they say it is - you learn from other people. And my cohorts and I would sneak around the coffee shops and hear stuff we wanted to learn, and then you ask whoever was playing it to teach you.

Somebody else does the rigor and then I listen. I have an assistant, and my manager, and other people who hunt and find and send it to me, and then I just figure out which ones I can do justice to.

Some people don't even notice. "Oh, you sound exactly like you did!" And I say, "OK, if that's what you want to believe, that's fine."

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.

Social change really cannot happen unless people are willing to take a risk, and they were. And I was so moved by that, and of course by the way that he spoke, that made a huge dent in my belief system and my spirit.

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.