Bob Dylan: Quotes about people

Bob Dylan is American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Bob Dylan: 1046 quotes51 likes

“People starving and thirsting; grain elevators are bursting. You know, it costs more to store the food than it do to give it.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), Slow Train

“I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know there are some people terrified of the bomb, but there are others terrified to be seen carrying a Modern Screen magazine. Experience teaches that silence terrifies the most.”

Bob Dylan

As quoted in "Cosmo Listens to Records" http://www.mediafire.com/view/za1l4i1dftotwg9/.png by Nat Hentoff, in Cosmopolitan (November 1965)

“I'm listening to Billy Joe Shaver
And I'm reading James Joyce
Some people they tell me
I've got the blood of the land in my voice”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Together Through Life (2009), I Feel A Change Coming On

“Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than those who are most content.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Brownsville Girl (with Sam Shepard)

“All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me now…”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Tangled Up In Blue

“Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Lead Belly too
An' to all the good people that traveled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind”

Bob Dylan

Compare: "We come with the dust and we go with the wind." Woody Guthrie, Pastures of Plenty.
Song lyrics, Bob Dylan (1962), Song to Woody

“In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Love Minus Zero/No Limit

“Reporter: How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil - how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the, uh, social state in which we live today: the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.
Bob Dylan: Um…how many?
Reporter: Yes. How many?
Bob Dylan: Uh, I think there's about, uh…136.
Reporter: You say about 136, or you mean exactly 136?
Bob Dylan: Uh, it's either 136 or 142.”

Bob Dylan

Press conference in Los Angeles, California (17 December 1965), as seen and heard in No Direction Home.

“The people in my songs are all me.”

Bob Dylan

"Bob Dylan Sounds Off On The Origin Of His New Record, Parlor Music, Dr. Dre, And Who His Songs Are About" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/19/bob-dylan-interview-revea_n_188782.html, Huffington Post (20 May 2009)

“There’s seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm
Somewhere in the distance
There's seven new people born”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), Ballad of Hollis Brown

“Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Blowin' in the Wind

“As a performer I've played for 50,000 people and I've played for 50 people and I can tell you that it is harder to play for 50 people. 50,000 people have a singular persona, not so with 50. Each person has an individual, separate identity, a world unto themselves. They can perceive things more clearly. Your honesty and how it relates to the depth of your talent is tried.”

Bob Dylan

Nobel Banquet Speech

“A lot of people complaining that there is no work. I say, "Why you say that for?" When nothin' you got is US-made — they don't make nothin' here no more.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Union Sundown

“Colleges are like old-age homes; except for the fact that more people die in colleges.”

Bob Dylan

Playboy Interview (February 1966)

“The one was Texas medicine. the other was just railroad gin. And, like a fool, I mixed them and it strangled up my mind and now people just get uglier and I have no sense of time.”

Bob Dylan

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

“I had no answers to any of those questions any more than any other performer did, really. But, you know, that didn't stop the press or people or whoever they were from asking these questions. They, for some reason the press thought that performers had the answers to all these problems in the society and you know, like what can… What can you say to something like that? I mean, it's just kind of absurd.”

Bob Dylan

No Direction Home (2005)

“Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown.
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin.'”

Bob Dylan

Source: Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), The Times They Are A-Changin