Bob Dylan
Nobel laureate, transformed popular song into literature
Most quoted
"Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true."
— from Interview
"Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call. Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall. For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled. The battle outside ragin' will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls."
— from Song (The Times They Are a-Changin'), 1963
"Some people feel that if you just want to be a rock 'n' roll singer or something, then you should go for it. But I think that if you're not, then you should be honest about it."
— from Interview, 1965
All quotes by Bob Dylan (310)
The only thing that's permanent is change.
There is no truth. There is only perception.
People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.
I define nothing. Not beauty, not love, not God. I don't want to be confined by definitions.
The world is full of people who are always searching for something, and they don't know what it is.
Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.
I don't think I'm a spiritual person. I'm a person who has spiritual experiences.
You can never be free if you're afraid to die.
The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do?
The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles.
I've been down on the bottom of a world full of lies.
And I'll know my song well before I start singing.
The world is a-changing, and the times are a-changing.
May your heart always be joyful, may your song always be sung.
You can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself.
I don't have to be me, I'm free.
The more you know, the less you understand.
There's no such thing as 'the truth.' There's only what happened.
You can lead a man to water, but you can't make him think.
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
Contemporaries of Bob Dylan
Other Musics born within 50 years of Bob Dylan (1941).