Top 20 Arlo Guthrie Quotes

You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.

With the advent of radio and recording, music became an industry rather than just a tradition.

Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person’s point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.

Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that’s why garage bands started springing up everywhere.

I think of my parents as a single unit, and it’s interesting because they shared so much, and they were totally opposite. My mother, a Martha Graham dancer, had a classical background; my father had a back-porch background.

Along with a sense of humor, my songs have to be sincere, and they have to be sung from a position of inner conviction.

I don’t want a pickle, just want to ride on my motorsickle.

My only description for me is that there’s no throwaway people. That’s the creed that I live by. It doesn’t matter if I’m singing or not. That’s the kind of person that my father and mother wanted me to be. The end obligation is to make people feel good about who they are.

Music is a nice friend to have around, whether it is just for yourself or for other people. If you can enjoy it, being professional is almost secondary.

People were talking about songs of the common man in order to make the common man. With Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, they were so common it was just uncommon.

Yes, I was born in Coney Island. The Holy Land.

You get people talking about being worried about their art, and dances… their culture being wiped out or taken over, and yet these same people are taking advantage of their people to use them as cheap labour.

We would turn everything into songs in those days.

I’m not just a singer-songwriter doing songs in the key of me.

There are people all over the world who are willing to exploit others. You can’t just point the finger at America.

I’d rather have friends who care than friends who agree with me.

Building walls isn’t going to work in the long run. Some people are happy with the wall in Israel, but somebody will get a weapon someday and knock it over or something. Walls aren’t the answer between countries, though.

Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that’s actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.

If you do anything for 40 years, you can do it comfortably. And it will always be good. But unless you’re willing to risk it being bad, it can never be great.

Everywhere I go, I see all kinds of people at my shows – conservatives, liberals, new-agers, teen-agers, old pensioners. And for those people to have something in common is real interesting to me.