Pete Seeger Quotes

Songs sometimes are so connected to the sociology of the time.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

If you really believe music is dangerous, you should let it go in one ear and out the other.

Throughout history the leaders of the countries have been very particular about what songs should be sung. We know the power of songs.

I guess the majority of people who want to ban certain musicians are the ones who are so proud of everything America stands for.

I don't find music being less important than, like, politics.

The music industry has been hijacked by corporate interests, but the way music affects people and resonates with them hasn't changed.

Music moves society more than most people realize. In my opinion, it's a soft manipulator of influence and change.

Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later and it means something to us, and it always will do. It's incredibly important.

Acting upon everybody for 30 minutes in 24 hours, the press is asked to create a mystical force called Public Opinion that will take up the slack in public institutions. The press has often mistakenly pretended that it could do just that.

Don’t listen to music that is degrading.

It is extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

In Russia, as well as everywhere else, the true and lasting power is that of public opinion, and of those who know how to influence it.

Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.

We're one of the only bands that get censored for theological commentary.

Many pop songs seem to be more potent now than in their heyday.

Nobody can figure out why it does what it does to human beings. But there is no other art form greater than music.

Without no disrespect to any artist, there's a lot of degrading music out there as far as degrading the culture and degrading society as well. That's individuals that choose to make that kind of music.

I grew up listening to 2 Live Crew and NWA and I never went out and shot nobody.

One song isn't going to ever change things, but I suppose it's the accumulation of music generally [that is]. If you can imagine a world that has no music in it, it would be a very different world, so music does change the world by virtue of all the music in it. Cumulative music of every kind, from banging a drum to playing a flute or recording symphonies, or singing 'War, what is it good for?' All those things change the whole way we live.

The right song can turn an emperor into a laughingstock, can bring down dynasties.

The only force at the disposal of democracy is that of public opinion.

As the attuning of music arouses emotions in the body to an unusual degree, well that there be choices made as to what the emotions are that are aroused by the character of music.

If there wasn't The Beach Boys and there wasn't music, I wouldn't even talk to them. But through the music I fell in love with my brothers.

Governments, existing primarily to protect and enhance capitalism, maintain their power through the use of technologies that control the populace - by bread or circuses, by war or schooling, by armies and police, all of which are enabled and empowered by technology. That is what we might call the stick part of capitalism, while the riches-for-the-few is the carrot.