Quote

A productive mistake is: (1) made in the service of mission and vision (2) acknowledged as a mistake (3) learned from (4) considered valuable (5) shared for the benefit of all.

Pete Seeger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Pete Seeger
Age: 94 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 3
Died: 2014
Died: January 27
Banjoist
Guitarist
Mandolinist
Musicologist
Peace Activist
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Street Artist
New York City
New York
Peter Seeger
Made
Benefit
Considered
Valuable
Service
Acknowledged
Benefits
Shared
Learned
Mission
Mistake
Missions
Vision
Productive

More quotes by Pete Seeger

Image
I was working for Alan Lomax in the Library of Congress folk song archive, and starting to realize what a wealth of different kinds of music there was in this country that you never heard on the radio.
Pete Seeger
Image
We all go to different churches or no churches, we have different favorite foods, different ways of making love, different ways of doing all sorts of things, but there we're all singing together. Gives you hope.
Pete Seeger
Image
The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. All you can do is circle around and say it's somewhere in there.
Pete Seeger
Image
I was never enthusiastic about being somebody who was supposed to be silent about being a member of something.
Pete Seeger
Image
I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.
Pete Seeger
Image
Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.
Pete Seeger
Image
I still prefer to hear [Bob] Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father's old term.
Pete Seeger
Image
Honest songs aren`t written for money.
Pete Seeger
Image
Now somebody will ask me, Pete, how can you prove these songs really make a difference? And I have to confess I can't prove a darn thing, except that the people in power must think they do something, because they keep the songs off the air.
Pete Seeger
Image
If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.
Pete Seeger
Image
I fought for peace in the fifties.
Pete Seeger
Image
It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.
Pete Seeger
Image
The American Indians were Communists. They were. Every anthropologist will tell you they were Communists. No rich, no poor. If somebody needed something the community chipped in.
Pete Seeger
Image
I get up each morning, gather my wits, pick up the paper and read the obits. If I'm not there, I know I'm not dead, so I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
Pete Seeger
Image
RULERS should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung.
Pete Seeger
Image
If I had an axe on the evening at Newport when [Dylan] broke out the electric guitar, I'd have cut his cable.
Pete Seeger
Image
Do-so is more important than say-so.
Pete Seeger
Image
It's a terrible thing being a patriarch. I don't even have a gray beard. But people keep calling me up for advice.
Pete Seeger
Image
A song is like a picture of a bird in flight the bird was moving before the picture was taken, and no doubt continued after.
Pete Seeger
Image
Any idiot can be complicated. It takes a genius to be simple.
Pete Seeger