The world would never amount to a hill of beans if people didn't use their imaginations to think of the impossible.

I believe that all technological societies tend to self-destruct. The reason is that the very things that make us a successful technological society, such as our curiosity, our ambition and determination, will also cause us to fall.

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

Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

My dad, the old professor, used to say, 'Never get into an argument about what's folk music and what isn't.'

I don't think of God as an old white man with no belly button, nor even an old black woman with no belly button. But I agree that God is something eternal. Something cannot come out of nothing. I believe God is Everything. And I believe in infinity.

Songs won't save the planet, but neither will books or speeches.