Utah Phillips famous quotes

03-28-2025

Kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That's why I sing these songs. That's why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit!
-- Utah Phillips

#Country #Song #Brother
The Earth is not dying-it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.
-- Utah Phillips

#Names #People #Dying
Sing your song Dance your dance Tell your story I will Listen and remember
-- Utah Phillips

#Song #Stories #Remember
The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free...
-- Utah Phillips

#Freedom #Eye #Giving
You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They're going to strip mine your soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!
-- Utah Phillips

#Cutting #Rivers #America
Time is an enormous, long river, and Iâ€™m standing in it, just as youâ€™re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me â€“ and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world
-- Utah Phillips

#Song #Struggle #Bridges
Cause the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked. Hmmmm.
-- Utah Phillips

#Rivers #Path #Resistance
Every good educator knows that true teaching is to teach kids how to ask the right questions.
-- Utah Phillips

#Teaching #Kids #Educator
I guarantee, that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out, shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing . . . Which is to say, if you want something done, don't come to me to do it for you; you got to get together and figure out how to do it yourselves. Is that a deal?
-- Utah Phillips

#White #House #Together
The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.
-- Utah Phillips

#Degrees
I'm here to change the world, and if I am not, I am probably wasting my time.
-- Utah Phillips

#World #Changing The World #Wasting My Time
But if itâ€™s true that the only true life I had was the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that, at the end of the day, they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance!
-- Utah Phillips

#Eight #Hands #Giving
Children, be worried when they call you America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they've done to the other natural resources?
-- Utah Phillips

#Children #America #Done
Laurie Lewis' songs combine passion and sheer craft in a way you don't hear very often. Whatever country music is supposed to be, she's at the center of it.
-- Utah Phillips

#Country #Song #Passion
As I have said so often before, the long memory is the most radical idea in Americaâ€¦.
-- Utah Phillips

#Memories #Ideas #America
Chris Chandler is the best performance poet I have ever seen.
-- Utah Phillips

#Poet #Performances
You came into the world armed to the teeth. With an arsenal of weapons, weapons of privilege, economic privilege, sexual privilege, racial privilege. You want to be a pacifist, you're not just going to have to give up guns, knives, clubs, hard, angry words, you are going to have lay down the weapons of privilege and go into the world completely disarmed.
-- Utah Phillips

#Giving Up #Gun #Knives

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