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

Way back in the old days, say in Europe of the Middle Ages, you had an aristocracy, and they could afford to pay for musicians. The kings and queens had musicians in the castles, and that developed into symphony orchestras and what we call "Classical music" now.

Make the kind of music you love even if you never hear it on the air. This was the basic lesson I'd gotten from Alan [Lomax]. Alan said, Pete, look at all this great music around. You never hear it on the radio, but it's right there, great music.

People are combining traditions like never before and finding somehow a fundamental unity for this human race of ours. I think working with each other as Jeff Haynes has done here-we may be surprised to find what deeper unity all human beings have.

We all go to different churches or no churches, we have different favorite foods, different ways of making love, different ways of doing all sorts of things, but there we're all singing together. Gives you hope.

He [Alan Lomax] started right off trying to find people who could introduce folk songs to city people. He found a young actor named Burl Ives and said, "Burl, you know a lot of great country songs learned from your grandmother, don't you know people would love to hear them?" He put on radio programs. He persuaded CBS to dedicate "The School of the Air" for one year to American folk music. He'd get some old sailor to sing an old sea shanty with a cracked voice. Then he'd get me to sing it with my banjo.

How can you save the world you have not seen if you can't save the community you have seen?