Great 60s Quotes & Sayings

My grandfather was a member of Parliament for 40 years. Obviously we're talking here South Africa, a whites only parliament. I grew up in a family that was very involved with the legal battles against apartheid - the great treason trials in the 1950s and early '60s, and later with the legal resources center that my mother founded. My father was involved with a number of very prominent cases that had political aspects to them, whether it was the inquest into the Sharpeville Massacre, the death of Steve Biko, or one of the trials of Nelson Mandela. — William Kentridge

Reading poetry and reading the great works of the canon that we were reading in the '60s and the '70s and '80s was mind altering. — Anne Lamott

That's the great thing about music. You can find some '60s pop record and feel completely invigorated by it, even though it's so old. — Kathleen Hanna

I came to New York for the first time with Peter Buck at age 19. We spent a week living out of a van on the street in front of a club in the West 60s called Hurrah. It's where Pylon played. I saw Klaus Nomi play there. And Michael Gira's band before he did Swans-they all wore cowboy boots and were so cool and had great hair. I was so jealous. — Michael Stipe

I talk to all the creative directors today, and they take me aside, and they say, 'You know, it must have been great back in those days when you could do anything you wanted.' I say, 'Huh? Excuse me?' I mean, we fought. In the '60s and '70s, you fought wars with clients, and you have to continue fighting wars to do great work. — George Lois

Anyone who knows the history of the Pete Best Band or the Combo, we were on the verge of breaking in in America. In the mid-'60s, I had great songwriters; we wrote some great stuff. — Pete Best

In the '60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn't just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at the time. — George Clooney

There was so much great music around in the '60s, stuff like The Small Faces, but I also love The Jam. — Iwan Rheon

Another cultural thing that's really creepy. It's not like in the '60s, where there were definitely great high points of creativity where people were trying to outdo each other to be noticed even — J. Robbins

I wrote a great deal about the Civil Rights Movement when I was writing for 'The Nation' in the '60s, and also for Esquire magazine. Reading the biography of Coffin, it just reminded me that in those days, when you saw the term 'Christian,' it usually meant people for civil rights and for justice. — Dan Wakefield

I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the '60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff. — Clint Eastwood

I honed in on a great time, the Motown era, the '60s and '70s. That type of music has always been a staple in my life. — Raphael Saadiq

The Beatles, the Small Faces and the Kinks were great bands, but that was in the '60s. — Gavin Rossdale

I think Hollywood has gone in a disastrous path. It's terrible. The years of cinema that were great were the '30s, '40s, not so much the '50s ... but then the foreign films took over and it was a great age of cinema as American directors were influenced by them and that fueled the '50s and '60s and '70s. — Woody Allen

I'm always scouring the universe for great old instruments from the '50s and early '60s. That's really, for me, the golden age of basses, when they had just been invented within 10 years of that period and they had just started to come into their own, especially the old Fender jazz basses and old Rickenbackers and Gibsons. I'm always on the lookout. It's fun. — Geddy Lee

The '60s was the last time when large groups of people in the West searched for alternative modes of being. In a society like India's, which is not fully modern or totally organized, and has a great deal of tolerance for otherness in general, people find the cultural license to try other things, to be whatever they want to be. — Pankaj Mishra

When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia
which was inappropriate, certainly that ... to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people, — Eric Holder

The '60s were a time of great change in American music. — Alexandra Patsavas

My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s. — John Cusack

When the hippie era ended and the hangover began, as idealism gives way to disillusionment, the hair of the marchers and street-dancers kept getting longer, and soon it began to tangle. Free love deteriorated into loveless promiscuity, our great electric Kool-Aid acid test churned out an entire generation of burnt-out old relics, and the hair, once a symbol of freedom, became symbolic of the new face of prison, a lawlessness which taken to its logical extreme would imprison all of society as our growing criminal element took to the streets. — Tommy Walker

I was shooting in the low 70s and 60s by the time I was 12. That's the great thing about golf. It doesn't matter how old or young you are. If you're 90 and can shoot a good score, people will want to play with you. — Bubba Watson

Students in the '60s were responsible for great changes, politically and socially. — Tom Ford

I was born in '74, so I missed out on all the great early '60s and early '70s. — Alanis Morissette

I love the live performances and Las Vegas. I also like making films that are being discovered by another generation. Having been a teen idol of the '60s is great because you realize you left your generation with a smile and good memories. — Connie Stevens

I don't buy into the glory days thing. I think every time has its great things to it. The '60s were such a glorious time but it's easy to forget that there was all sorts of bullshit too. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late '60s in Cambridge. The ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind. — Bonnie Raitt

I grew up listening to pop; I grew up listening to '60s pop music, the Beatles, the Monkees, Herman's Hermits and all that stuff. So I had a very strong background of listening to great pop music. — Jane Wiedlin

Nothing has really changed. We had bootleg albums in the '60s and today we have Internet file sharing. They just found a better way to do it
get music for free. What's great about today is an artist has an opportunity to go direct to their audience without dealing with a middleman. People can go directly to the web for CDs, DVDs and downloads. I think that's the best thing that's happened, that people's music is being flashed around the world. — Richie Havens

I am, as it happens, a baby boomer, but not one who feels any broad-gauge nostalgia for the '60s and '70s. My attitude resembles that of my parents, who were born in the '20s and lived through the Great Depression and World War II. — Terry Teachout

Certainly there are dozens of over-50 actresses who look great: Sophia Loren, Susan Sarandon, Ursula Andress, Stefanie Powers, Raquel Welch, Barbara Eden, Joanna Lumley, Linda Gray - the list is endless, and these are just the actresses! I have many friends in their 60s, 70s and 80s, not in the limelight, but who all look absolutely stunning. — Joan Collins

The '60s was a magical time in the music business. So much creativity and talent. I think a lot of it came from the fact that we had grown up before rock n' roll. We listened to all the great songwriters and big bands, songs with great lyrics and melodies. I think that really influenced everybody. — Frankie Valli

How do you get the happy ending? John Irving ought to know. One of my favorite authors, Irving writes these multigenerational epics of fiction that somehow work out in the end. How does he do it? He says, 'I always begin with the last sentence ; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.' Thst sounds like a lot of work, especially compared to the fantasy that great writers sit down and just go where the story takes them. Irving lets us know that good stories and happy endings are more intentional than that.
Most 20 something's can't write the last sentence of their lives. But when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their 30s or 40s or 60s -or things they don't want- and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time. — Meg Jay

I'd pick a young white guy over an old white guy for president anytime because the younger guy is more likely to have been influenced by the great social changes of the '60s and '70s. — D. L. Hughley