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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

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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
Much
Raised
Became
Side
Violence
Pretty
Sides
Livelihood
Came
Discussion
Politics
Foundation

More quotes by 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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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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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
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I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace I was trying to disturb the war.
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're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.
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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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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Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A fullblown storm where everything changes.
Joan Baez
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Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez
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Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow.
Joan Baez
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If you're gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up.
Joan Baez
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I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.
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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If you don't have music, you have silence. There is power in both.
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.
Joan Baez
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We both know what memories can bring / They bring diamonds and rust.
Joan Baez
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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
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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've been obsessed with stopping people from blowing each other's brains out since I was ten.
Joan Baez