Pete Seeger Quotes

Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo.

That's the heart of it: My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people.

A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.

Power in America today is control of the means of communication.

If one person doesn't like your film, if he's powerful, your film will never see the light of day.

It would be nice to think that a censor could allow a genuine work of artistic seriousness and ban a titillating piece of sadism, but it would take a miracle to make such a distinction stick.

My songs is hard stuff which politicians don't want on them radio station because they still want people to live in ignorancy.

I don't think that Hollywood will have much to do with changing politics. Hollywood usually reflects things.

What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.

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.

Newspapers are closed if they print the wrong things in Iran. Iranian journalists or Iranian-American journalists, for that matter, I think are pressured in a lot of different ways, expected to give information to intelligence services. Americans can be thrown out of the country.

I think that a good song is catchy, and a great song is not catchy - but it has a deeper meaning.

If the media spotlight affects my work or represses what I want to say in the future, then it is bad.

...the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given.... if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order.... There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state.

The time-honored role of the artist [is] to speak truth to power.

There's still injustice happening in my world. I sing my songs at concerts and I'm so grateful that the people are ready to hear them.

I don't think China should care if this crazy old guy should have a show here or not. You have so many museums in the West, and so many shows, you need somebody to show the work, otherwise it's empty.

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.

If you go out to some of the big cities in California, and you look at some of the monopoly situations out there, the thing is just shocking. And the tendency, and I think it's bound to be, unless it is carefully combated by those who are managing the papers, the tendency of a monopoly situation is bound to be to damp everything down to a common level.

The media is in charge of what you think. They're in charge of what you know and don't know. And any challenge to that, like alternative media or a president with direct access to the audience and doesn't need them, is a threat.

There's a big thing right now with people using stand-up as a scapegoat. People think comedians have the power to change someone in an hour. If we had that ability, the art would not be legal. It would too dangerous.

I think it was a modest thing I did (Fahrenheit 9/11) ... this is an election year ... I'm not telling them how to vote. I'm saying get information about the issues ... at first there's just silence, then there's 'Yeah!' and then there's 'Boo' ... I have never seen a reaction like this, in all my years of touring ... Clear Channel can't threaten to not play my records because they are not going to play them anyway.