If you have the guts to keep making mistakes, your wisdom and intelligence leap forward with huge momentum.
Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?
I don't believe in nirvana. If nirvana was handed to us on a silver platter, this would be the first day of our struggle to keep it.
It's been important to me to be a good activist, a good thinker, a good musician, a good singer, and a good entertainer. You can't do it all, but I have walked those delicate lines as best I know how.
We who are interested in relative truth have to keep digging for it and not let ourselves be sucked under.
You can't just leave out one part; the bread won't rise if the yeast isn't there.
The war on drugs is a war against the communities.
My creativity and my political work are linked. I don't do this work out of guilt or out of responsibility.
When an audience comes to one of my concerts, I hope they'll see themselves, somewhere, in one of the songs.
Part of being an artist is being willing to be shocked, being willing to be surprised, being willing to be hurt.
Leaping away from my mistakes has propelled me forward. It has great force behind it. It makes for great storytelling.
My parents had been involved in the labor movement; if we'd grown up in the city, we would have been red-diaper babies.
Language is like songs, like food, like dance-it is the expression of what we think.
To my great surprise and pleasure, I have had dinner with most of the people living with whom I would like to have dinner.
People love to hear the mistakes you've made.
I'm not allowing my perspective to be dictated by the dominant culture.
My parents encouraged thought. You'll get through life better if you learn how to think.
You just keep feeding hogwash to people, and pretty soon they'll eat it.
It is essential that men start being interested in and excited by how women think.
The women's movement completely changed attitudes all over the world in ways we'll never be able to count.
