I write a song because I want to. I think the moment you start writing it to make money, you're starting to kill yourself artistically.

I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.

It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

I tell kids, don't trust the media. The media with their emphasis on fame is helping to destroy this country, helping destroy the human race. It's the plug-in drug.

Shh. Listen to the sounds that surround you. Notice the pitches, the volume, the timbre, the many lines of counterpoint. As light taught Monet to paint, the earth may be teaching you music.

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

This world is so full of hypocrisy, the only way you can be honest is to be a hermit.

Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.

If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.

The worst time to quit on yourself is when things are getting hard in your life.

A piece of paper doesn't make you a pastor any more than making predictions makes you a prophet.

I don't buy 'regret' idea. I need life's good lesson.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

And hey, it's okay to laugh at yourself sometimes, I do dumb things all the time (haha). But when it get's too personal, get your tough skin on and stand firm.

. . . the sin of abortion, or the destruction of unborn children - lies somewhere a close kin to the crime of destroying human life and certainly to be condemned.

Let individuals create real wealth, empower them, create something that they can leave for their children.

No nation keeps another in subjection without herself turning into a subject nation.

Great towns are but a large sort of prison to the soul; like cages to birds, or pounds to beasts.

Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.