Joan Baez Quotes & Sayings

If you don't have music, you have silence. There is power in both. — Joan Baez

I was writing Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was. — Joan Baez

Put tattoos all up and down our thighs, do anything our parents would despise. Take uppers, downers, blues, and reds and yellows, our brains are turning into jello. — Joan Baez

I don't think of myself as a symbol of the sixties, but I do think of myself as a symbol of following through on your beliefs. — Joan Baez

I think I would have had an easier time of it if I had had training much earlier. Because when I got to the training, it was in my late 30s and I already probably had every bad habit a singer could have. In fact, it still goes on. It's un-training those habits and retraining new ones - the breathing, the relaxation, the tongue, the lungs, the everything. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

I wish it was clear for me how it happened [stop writing songs], then maybe I could start writing again. But it's kind of an "it." It just submerged itself. Because the way I had always written was just that it came out. It just happened. — Joan Baez

There is chaos. There's bloodshed. There's carnage. — Joan Baez

It [my vocal] didn't sound like what I wanted to hear; the vibrato isn't what I liked anymore. So I got myself to an ear, nose and throat guy who does a lot of work with singers, and I was hoping there was a big wart on my vocal cords or something and they could scrape it off and I could have the voice I wanted. But he said, "No, for 71, that's your voice." — Joan Baez

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning. — Joan Baez

There's a consensus out that it's OK to kill when your government decides who to kill. If you kill inside the country you get in trouble. If you kill outside the country, right time, right season, latest enemy, you get a medal. — Joan Baez

We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers. — Joan Baez

To sing is to praise God and the daffodils, and to praise God is to thank Him, in every note within my small range, and every color in the tones of my voice, with every look into the eyes of my audience, to thank Him. Thank you, God, for letting me be born, for giving me eyes to see the daffodils lean in the wind, all my brothers, all my sisters, for giving me ears to hear crying, legs to come running, hands to smooth damp hair, a voice to laugh with and to sing with ... to sing to you and the daffodils ... — Joan Baez

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence. — Joan Baez

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

I see a young man playing 'Plaisir d'Amour' on guitar. I knew I didn't want to go to college; I was already playing a ukulele, and after I saw that, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing. — Joan Baez

Seeing you sleeping peacefully on your back among your stuffed ducks, bears and basset hounds, would remind me that no matter how good the next day might be, certain moments were gone forever because we could not go backwards in time. — Joan Baez

My father was a physicist and also an activist. My first public protest was with my dad at Stanford. I came by all that honestly. — Joan Baez

I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of rage and sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses. — Joan Baez

My dread is for my show to be a nostalgia act. So the key to it is how do we keep it fresh? — Joan Baez

God must have something to do with joy ... and with sadness. — Joan Baez

If it came back I would be thrilled. I would be delighted to write more songs. I need them now because I want to make an album and I have to depend on other people's music, which I've done for years. But still, it'd be really nice to be able to sprinkle it with my own. — Joan Baez

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? — Joan Baez

Nonviolence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence. — Joan Baez

All of us are survivors, but how many of us transcend survival? — Joan Baez

I've never been an optimist. — Joan Baez

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. — Joan Baez

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me. — Joan Baez

And my voice now is a struggle, it's a daily struggle to keep it up. Gravity has begun to fight the vocal cords the way it does with everybody. So I have a vocal therapist, and we record the sessions and I use them on tour every day. — Joan Baez

I love the lower ranges of my new voice. I really enjoy that. It's a challenge, and I accept the challenge. I sort of enjoy it now to reach notes that maybe four years ago I couldn't reach. I don't mean to grumble about it. I'm past that critical period and have gone on to a whole new field. And we go everywhere. We travel around the world, and I learn songs from every place we go, and it's a joyful process. — Joan Baez

In other words, it is what I do in the world that matters. When I traveled for three months in the Mideast, the places I wanted to go back to were Turkey and the Gaza Strip. It has to do with what Gandhi said: he found God in the eyes of the poor. Those are the places which were so moving that they were just unbearable. — Joan Baez

I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war. — Joan Baez

That's all nonviolence is - organized love. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs. — Joan Baez

I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it? — Joan Baez

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one. — Joan Baez

There are good guys, and there are congressional people who are good guys, and I certainly vote in those elections. You know, my fondest dream would be if Obama, when he got out of office, decided he was going to go back and organize on the streets. He'd be the only person I could imagine who could really create a movement similar to what King did, and God knows we need that now. — Joan Baez

We both know what memories can bring / They bring diamonds and rust. — Joan Baez

Living so fully, I can't imagine what any drug could do for me. — Joan Baez

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now. — Joan Baez

If you swing both ways, you really swing. I just figure you double your pleasure. — Joan Baez

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

As long as one keeps searching, the answers will come. — Joan Baez

Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

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." — Joan Baez

That was sheer luck that it [being immersed into folk scene] happened when my voice began to develop. I don't know exactly what would have happened if I hadn't been alive and well and really lively in the Cambridge scene. But (the folk scene) was, and I fell into it absolutely naturally in the little coffee shops, and pretty soon it was Newport and then it was an overwhelming response internationally, actually. — Joan Baez

When I was 16, the guest speaker was King. And I was completely overwhelmed because I had been studying nonviolence, talking about it, reading about it, but here it was happening, here it was people boycotting the buses and people on the streets and taking risks, which I think was the key. — Joan Baez

If you're gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up. — Joan Baez

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

Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow.
You special, miraculous, unrepeatable, fragile, fearful, tender, lost, sparkling ruby emerald jewel, rainbow splendor person. It's up to you. — Joan Baez

Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it is really God - playing music in his favourite cathedral in heaven - shattering stained glass - playing a gigantic organ - thundering on the keys - perfect harmony - perfect joy. — Joan Baez

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you ... because no one has the right to take the life of another human being. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry. — Joan Baez

Peace might sell, but who's buying? — Joan Baez

The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation. — Joan Baez

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy. — Joan Baez

Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job. — Joan Baez

Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times. — Joan Baez

As long as we keep searching, the answers come. — Joan Baez

I was trying to disturb the war. — Joan Baez

The point on nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. — Joan Baez

The search is in the doing. — Joan Baez

We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood. — Joan Baez

The point of nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. A platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to stand. — Joan Baez

Action is the antidote to despair. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

I think the question that nobody wanted to deal with is the question they're posing: did my kid die in vain? Because the answer is too awful. — Joan Baez

To love means you also trust. — Joan Baez

Now I know I understand that it was Sgt. Pepper's Band, that put the sixties into song, where have all the heroes gone? — Joan Baez

The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10. Non-violence. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez

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. — Joan Baez