All the arts, music, the visual arts, acting and dancing arts, cooking arts, and I believe sports, will save the human race because they can leap over barriers, religions, leap over barriers of race, politics.

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

I am saying voluntarily that I have sung for almost every religious group in the country, from Jewish and Catholic, and Presbyterian and Holy Rollers and Revival Churches.

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

I was about 16 years old years when my father took me to a square dance festival in North Carolina. For the first time in my life, I found there was music in my country that you never heard on the radio, and you didn't hear on the juke boxes, and in theaters. I fell in love with it, especially the long-necked banjos.

Hope that there are many, many small leaders.

I believe that my choosing my present course I do no dishonor to them, or to those who may come after me.