Joan baez

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.

The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation.

I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing.

My dread is for my show to be a nostalgia act. So the key to it is how do we keep it fresh?

I'm lucky to have met so many people who have been involved in peace and who have been peace prize winners.

My father was a physicist and also an activist. My first public protest was with my dad at Stanford. I came by all that honestly.

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.

I've never been an optimist.

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.

We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood.