Pete Seeger Quotes

Art is not created in a vacuum. That experience is something to be shared with a group of people, and to be moved in that way.

I think live music is really, really important. And I think it's very important to do together. It's much more fun to play to music together than the one person listening to their lone iPod Shuffle. I think it's an amazing way to build community and have children do things that are funded that's not a videogame.

I think music is supposed to be shared.

If I was a cabinetmaker or a commercial fisherman, it would be the same question - how to connect to my world. The job we do affords us the opportunity to have people listen to what we say. But a lot of people have a similar situation: They're trying to find a way to do some good.

It makes me feel great, knowing my songs are being heard and of service to people.

What kind of influence do you want to have? What kind of effect do you want to have on other people? Never mistake the power of influence.

Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange our experiences...Experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.

Every song I ever wrote, I wrote to be heard. So, if I was given a choice that 50 years from now I could either have a dollar or knowing that some kid was listening to my song, I'd go with the kid listening to my song.

For most people, what is so painful about reading is that you read something and you don't have anybody to share it with. In part what the book club opens up is that people can read a book and then have someone else to talk about it with. Then they see that a book can lead to the pleasure of conversation, that the solitary act of reading can actually be a part of the path to communion and community.

When you are happy, the people around you are happy, too, and it inspires them to change their own world.

Last season when I was on set...for some reason I had The Battle Hymn of the Republic in my head but I didn't know all the words. It was one of those songs you had to learn when you were younger. It wasn't as important for people raised in the 80's and 90's as it was to people raised in the 50's, 60's and 70's so when I started singing "My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," Jane [Fonda] heard me singing it and started singing the rest of it. Suddenly everyone on set everyone was singing. That's just something I can keep in my heart forever.

When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest.

People make songs so that somebody else will hear them and want to do them. I guess it's an indication that the songs aren't so ultra-personal that they can't possibly be interpreted by anyone else.

In the aftermath of 9/11, people had not a good time, but a deep, profound, rousing time, woke up from their ennui and isolation and trivialization to feel engaged, connected, purposeful, ready to give, to engage, to care, to learn.

Projection will disappear. And the possibility that was given by motion pictures will be missed. The possibility of there being a real audience - a group of people who have nothing in common, but, at a certain time of the day or the week, are able to look with other nknown neighbors at something bigger than they are. To look at their problems in big. Not in small.

It's strange how we always want other people to feel what we feel. It must be a basic human drive. Misery loves company, right? Or when you see a movie that you love, don't you want to drag all your friends to see it as well? Because it's only good the second time if it's the first time for somebody else—as if their experience somehow resonates inside of you.

I want to touch people's lives, and bring them along with me.

I want to express the feelings that everyone has felt at least once in music so i think people will feel/understand my song.

I’m not a scholar or a psychologist, so I don’t really think about why. But I do think about what it means to sing to and with people, to offer music to them, and to ask them to spend time with me.

YouTube was a way for people to hear me and for me to say, "Hey, I can sing this song, I'm not in front of you yet because I'm too shy, but here's how I sound for now."

I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films. Whenever I go to have a meeting at Universal, the security guard just leaps to his feet and comes over, bumps my hand, and says, "Thank you! Thank you, I love your films!" And it's people who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, who like my films, and I like that.

I feel honored to be a part of something that provided people with entertainment and that inspired conversations. I feel very, very fortunate.

Ultimately what we actors are doing is communicating with people who are feeling alone or feeling different or confused or whatever and you're communicating and saying, "Hey, I don't get to know you, but here's a piece of me and you're not alone. We're in this together." Hopefully that communication has maybe made some people feel less alone.

I'd love to think that people in the future would gather in theatres, at conventions, and in darkened rooms, and read it out to each other.