Arlo Guthrie

“My dad's songs were really written to make certain people feel as though they had some kind of value. Because they were told from where they work and from the countries they had immigrated from that they did not.”

“Yes, I was born in Coney Island. The Holy Land.”

“Music is a nice friend to have around, whether it is just for yourself or for other people. If you can enjoy it, being professional is almost secondary.”

“Everyone has a responsibility to not only tolerate another person's point of view, but also to accept it eagerly as a challenge to your own understanding. And express those challenges in terms of serving other people.”

“There are people all over the world who are willing to exploit others. You can't just point the finger at America.”

“I think of my parents as a single unit, and it's interesting because they shared so much, and they were totally opposite. My mother, a Martha Graham dancer, had a classical background; my father had a back-porch background.”

“With the advent of radio and recording, music became an industry rather than just a tradition.”

“But think of the last guy. For one minute, think of the last guy. Nobody's got it worse than that guy. Nobody in the whole world.”

“We live in an increasingly sophisticated world that makes it difficult to make simple comments on stuff. There are too many people on both sides of the border who are taking advantage of circumstances and the situation.”

“Thank God that the people that run this world are not smart enough to keep running it forever. You know, everybody gets a handle on it for a little while.”

“At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to change the course of history.”

“The death of what's dead is the birth of what's living.”

“Basically, I think you need two things to get by in this world: a sense of humor and the ability to laugh when your ego is destroyed.”

“My mother had introduced me to a lot of my father's friends because she believed that I would get to know the guy my dad was better through his friends than just in the hospital visits.”