Bob Dylan.
Videos by American Songwriter
Many consider the 80-year-old Duluth, Minnesota-born artist the greatest songwriter of all time. Surely, his lyricism will last through the centuries. Songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” will last forever.
But what does the creative mind behind these indelible works have to say about the world at large? What does he have to say about life, love, liberty, and the art of laughing?
Here, we will dive into Dylan’s best 23 quotes. Certainly, there are many. But these are the best of the best. So, without further ado, let’s dive in.
1. “What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”
2. “Folk music is a bunch of fat people.”
3. “You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.”
4. “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”
5. “All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.”
6. “Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.”
7. “I’m inconsistent, even to myself.”
8. “If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.”
9. “Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.”
10. “A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.”
11. “I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.”
12. “Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.”
13. “I define nothing, not beauty not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.”
14. “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
15. “I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn’t allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.”
16. “There is nothing so stable as change.”
17. “No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.”
18. “A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.”
19. “I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.”
20. “This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.”
21. “Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.”
22. “I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.”
23. “I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.”
What’s your favorite Dylan quote? Comment below.
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