Chris Chandler is the best performance poet I have ever seen.

Folk music isn't owned by anybody. It is owned by everybody, like the national parks, the postal system, and the school system. It's our common property. There is nobody's name on it. Nobody can make money on it. It's not copywritten.

The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.

Sing your song Dance your dance Tell your story I will Listen and remember

Every good educator knows that true teaching is to teach kids how to ask the right questions.

The Earth is not dying-it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.

Children, be worried when they call you America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they've done to the other natural resources?

They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!

I'm here to change the world, and if I am not, I am probably wasting my time.

But if it’s true that the only true life I had was the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that, at the end of the day, they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance!

The most un-American thing you can do is to stifle dissent

The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.

I guarantee, that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out, shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing . . . Which is to say, if you want something done, don't come to me to do it for you you got to get together and figure out how to do it yourselves. Is that a deal?

As I have said so often before, the long memory is the most radical idea in America...

Laurie Lewis' songs combine passion and sheer craft in a way you don't hear very often. Whatever country music is supposed to be, she's at the center of it.