I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things.

The real meaning of courage was the personal sacrifice of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.

Be wary of great leaders.

I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear.

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.

If there is a world here in a hundred years, it's going to be saved by tens of millions of little things.

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.