Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Happens
Willing
Cannot
System
Dent
Change
Happen
Spokes
Take
Courses
Spoke
Made
Course
Moved
Really
Belief
Unless
Way
Social
Risk
People
Spirit
Huge

More quotes by Joan Baez

Image
I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don't know what's going to rise from the ruins.
Joan Baez
Image
The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
Joan Baez
Image
You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.
Joan Baez
Image
We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.
Joan Baez
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?
Joan Baez
Image
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
Image
I was trying to disturb the war.
Joan Baez
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is chaos. There's bloodshed. There's carnage.
Joan Baez
Image
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
Image
As long as we keep searching, the answers come.
Joan Baez
Image
The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10. Non-violence.
Joan Baez
Image
If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
Joan Baez
Image
I've been obsessed with stopping people from blowing each other's brains out since I was ten.
Joan Baez
Image
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