My parents encouraged thought. You’ll get through life better if you learn how to think.

When the students were killed at Kent State, the cast voted to do a demonstration from the stage, and I abstained.

Part of being an artist is being willing to be shocked, being willing to be surprised, being willing to be hurt.

You just keep feeding hogwash to people, and pretty soon they’ll eat it.

Poverty without a people’s government looks like hopelessness, but to see poverty in organized communities is to see relief-in-progress.

Music can be used against us as much as it can be used for us. Muzak can put a whole nation to sleep, whereas a lullaby is intended to put a child to sleep in...

I’m not allowing my perspective to be dictated by the dominant culture.

Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?

It’s been important to me to be a good activist, a good thinker, a good musician, a good singer, and a good entertainer. You can’t do it all, but I have walked those delicate lines...

When an audience comes to one of my concerts, I hope they’ll see themselves, somewhere, in one of the songs.

If you have the guts to keep making mistakes, your wisdom and intelligence leap forward with huge momentum.

Leaping away from my mistakes has propelled me forward. It has great force behind it. It makes for great storytelling.

Part of keeping space open is not to try to choose a form – to spend more time thinking about content, and let form take care of itself.

We who are interested in relative truth have to keep digging for it and not let ourselves be sucked under.

People love to hear the mistakes you’ve made.

A lot of artists say, I’m not political. People are afraid of this word.

To be always in a state of wonder is a kind of sensitivity that can sometimes be an extraordinary blessing and sometimes a real pain.

My creativity and my political work are linked. I don’t do this work out of guilt or out of responsibility.

I don’t believe in nirvana. If nirvana was handed to us on a silver platter, this would be the first day of our struggle to keep it.

I like this life. I like it when it’s hard, and I like it better when it’s not, but I know you don’t get the sweet part without the bitter.

My parents had been involved in the labor movement; if we’d grown up in the city, we would have been red-diaper babies.

If I didn’t think and feel the way I think and feel, I couldn’t sing the way I sing. And I like singing the way I sing.

Once women are not excluded, I don’t think any of us will give a damn what pronouns are used. That wasn’t the point.

The war on drugs is a war against the communities.

Language is like songs, like food, like dance-it is the expression of what we think.

The women’s movement completely changed attitudes all over the world in ways we’ll never be able to count.

White middle- and upper-class men have a longer journey to go than many people.

To come to a concert and hear a lot of songs from a female perspective should not make men say, ‘Oh well, that’s for women’.

When we make mistakes, say, I’m blessed that I have an opportunity to learn from this.

It is essential that men start being interested in and excited by how women think.

To my great surprise and pleasure, I have had dinner with most of the people living with whom I would like to have dinner.

You can’t just leave out one part; the bread won’t rise if the yeast isn’t there.