Joan Baez quotes

Born
January 9, 1941, Staten Island, New York.

Occupation
Singer, songwriter, musician.

Joan Baez is an American singer, songwriter and musician.

Peace might sell, but who’s buying?
– Joan Baez

I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don’t know what’s going to rise from the ruins.
– Joan Baez

Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A fullblown storm where everything changes.
– Joan Baez

Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.
– Joan Baez

As long as one keeps searching, the answers will come.
– Joan Baez

I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.
– Joan Baez

I’ve never had a humble opinion. If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?
– Joan Baez

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I’m not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.
– Joan Baez

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.
– 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

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

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

In this society, we don’t like to face the future and the dying process and all of it. Most of us really don’t want to think about it, but it’s facing me in the mirror every day.
– Joan Baez

If people have to put labels on me, I’d prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.
– 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

I would say that I’m a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you…because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.
– Joan Baez

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

People say I’m such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I’m a realist.
– Joan Baez

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.
– Joan Baez

I am so disconnected from the world of rock ‘n’ roll. I was always peripheral, partly because of the drug culture. I was not involved in that.
– Joan Baez

I’ve never been an optimist.
– Joan Baez

My dread is for my show to be a nostalgia act. So the key to it is how do we keep it fresh?
– Joan Baez

The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.
– Joan Baez

If you don’t have music, you have silence. There is power in both.
– Joan Baez

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

I’m lucky to have met so many people who have been involved in peace and who have been peace prize winners.
– Joan Baez

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

Seeing you sleeping peacefully on your back among your stuffed ducks, bears and basset hounds, would remind me that no matter how good the next day might be, certain moments were gone forever because we could not go backwards in time.
– Joan Baez

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men – bring them softness, teach them how to cry.
– Joan Baez

Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.
– Joan Baez

I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations – some large and some small.
– Joan Baez

Action is the antidote to despair.
– Joan Baez