The Best Joan Baez quotes

I have heard more than once, ‘Shut up and sing!’ and I get it now. — Joan Baez

If you’re gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up. — Joan Baez

God respects me when I work. He loves me when I sing. Tagore — Joan Baez

I see a young man playing ‘Plaisir d’Amour’ on guitar. I knew I didn’t want to go to college; I was already playing a ukulele, and after I saw that, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing. — Joan Baez

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one. — Joan Baez

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning. — Joan Baez

Nasty Man’ isn’t a laughing matter, but you have to laugh anyway. The song, itself, becomes something of a laughing matter because we’d go crazy if we didn’t keep laughing. — Joan Baez

Now I know I understand that it was Sgt. Pepper’s Band, that put the sixties into song, where have all the heroes gone? — Joan Baez

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

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, i have nothing much to do wIth the wrIting of them. the words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. — Joan Baez

It sounds corny, but it’s absolutely true: A song chooses me. I don’t go looking for a certain kind of lyric. It kind of develops its own little arc and I’ll just see what happens. — Joan Baez

I’m not a rock and roller, a hitmaker. I’m highly dependent on what’s coming out of these vocal cords. — Joan Baez

I think the question that nobody wanted to deal with is the question they’re posing: did my kid die in vain? Because the answer is too awful. — Joan Baez

There is chaos. There’s bloodshed. There’s carnage. — Joan Baez

That’s all nonviolence is–organized love. — Joan Baez

The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation. — Joan Baez

God must have something to do with joy … and with sadness. — Joan Baez

My father was a physicist and also an activist. My first public protest was with my dad at Stanford. I came by all that honestly. — Joan Chandos Baez

If you swing both ways, you really swing. I just figure you double your pleasure. — Joan Baez

The point on nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. — Joan Baez

You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. But you can decide how you’re going to live now. — Joan Baez

My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging in slow motion. — Joan Baez

Nonviolence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence. — Joan Baez

Somebody else does the rigor and then I listen. I have an assistant, and my manager, and other people who hunt and find and send it to me, and then I just figure out which ones I can do justice to. — Joan Baez