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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

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Joan Baez
Age: 84
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
Mind
Another
Faculty
Would
Place
Soldier
Life
Human
Available
Humans
Weapons
Take
Humor
Right
Violence
Nonviolent
Heart
Use
Disobedience
Every
Sense
Protest

More quotes by Joan Baez

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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
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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
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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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If you don't have music, you have silence. There is power in both.
Joan Baez
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As long as we keep searching, the answers come.
Joan Baez
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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.
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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We both know what memories can bring / They bring diamonds and rust.
Joan Baez
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Nonviolence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence.
Joan Baez
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Action is the antidote to despair.
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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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
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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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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
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If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
Joan Baez
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We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.
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 am so disconnected from the world of rock 'n' roll. I was always peripheral, partly because of the drug culture. I was not involved in that.
Joan Baez
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If you swing both ways, you really swing. I just figure you double your pleasure.
Joan Baez