Building walls isn’t going to work in the long run. Some people are happy with the wall in Israel, but somebody will get a weapon someday and knock it over or something. Walls aren’t the answer between countries, though. – Arlo Guthrie
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. – Arlo Guthrie
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. – Arlo Guthrie
People were talking about songs of the common man in order to make the common man. With Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, they were so common it was just uncommon. – Arlo Guthrie
I don’t do anything on stage that allows me to become a trained seal, where you’re just doing the same thing over and over. – Arlo Guthrie
My only description for me is that there’s no throwaway people. That’s the creed that I live by. It doesn’t matter if I’m singing or not. That’s the kind of person that my father and mother wanted me to be. The end obligation is to make people feel good about who they are. – Arlo Guthrie
I thought I would be governor of Massachusetts. I stood on a pile of my old albums and said, ‘I’m the only one with a record to stand on.’ – 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. – Arlo Guthrie
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. – Arlo Guthrie
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. – Arlo Guthrie
With the advent of radio and recording, music became an industry rather than just a tradition. – Arlo Guthrie
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. – Arlo Guthrie
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. – Arlo Guthrie
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. – Arlo Guthrie
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. – Arlo Guthrie
Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that’s why garage bands started springing up everywhere. – Arlo Guthrie
There are people all over the world who are willing to exploit others. You can’t just point the finger at America. – Arlo Guthrie
You get people talking about being worried about their art, and dances… their culture being wiped out or taken over, and yet these same people are taking advantage of their people to use them as cheap labour. – Arlo Guthrie