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I was trying to disturb the war.

Joan Baez

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Joan Baez
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: January 9
Activist
Composer
Dancer
Guitarist
Musician
Pacifist
Record Producer
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Staten Island
New York City
Joan Chandos Báez
Joan Báez
Joan Chandos Baez
Joan C. Baez
Disturb
War
Trying

More quotes by Joan Baez

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Diamonds & Rust started off as another song. Then the words started to morph. When you write a song that deep, the words come from some place else. But when the songs stop coming, it would be so contrived to try and force it. Since then I've just been doing other people's music.
Joan Baez
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I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don't know what's going to rise from the ruins.
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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.
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If you don't have music, you have silence. There is power in both.
Joan Baez
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The point on nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink.
Joan Baez
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I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?
Joan Baez
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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
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I was addicted to rhythm 'n' blues pretty much directly into folk music. I had my little 45s of mostly black artists. That was as close as I got. I've never listened to heavy rock or stuff that jangles my nerves, because I'm already jangled.
Joan Baez
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Nasty Man isn't a laughing matter, but you have to laugh anyway. The song, itself, becomes something of a laughing matter because we'd go crazy if we didn't keep laughing.
Joan Baez
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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
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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
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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
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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
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All of us are survivors, but how many of us transcend survival?
Joan Baez
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Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez
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I have heard more than once, 'Shut up and sing!' and I get it now.
Joan Baez
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If you swing both ways, you really swing. I just figure you double your pleasure.
Joan Baez
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As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.
Joan Baez
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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
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There's very little I can sing now. When I asked my first voice teacher, who was the best one, When will I know when to stop singing? he said, Your voice will tell you. And it is very, very difficult to sing now.
Joan Baez