Top 50 Gordon Lightfoot Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Sometimes I think it’s a shame, when I get feeling better when I’m feeling no pain.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

2. “If you plan to face tomorrow, do it soon.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

3. “Those who put their faith in fire, in fire their faith shall be repaid.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

4. “Rainy day people all know there’s no sorrow they can’t rise above.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

5. “I don’t know where we went wrong, but the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

6. “My first song was Hula Hoop Song, in 1955. It was a novelty song. I had to find someway to reach out and it was with a novelty song. Now, all of my recording obligations have been taken care of. I made 14 albums for Warner Brothers. Five for United Artist before that.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

7. “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

— Gordon Lightfoot

8. “The house you live in will never fall down, if you pity the stranger who stands at your door.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

9. “Will you gather daydreams or will you gather wealth? How can you find your fortune when you cannot find yourself?”

— Gordon Lightfoot

10. “Sometimes a broken dream will make you sad or make you mean. Sometimes things ain’t bad as they seem.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

11. “She been looking like a queen in a sailor’s dream.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

12. “To wear the crown of peace, you must wear the crown of thorns.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

13. “The road to love is littered by the bones of other ones, who by the magic of the moment were mysteriously undone.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

14. “If I could read your mind, what a tale your thoughts could tell. Just like a paperback novel, the kind that drugstores sell.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

15. “I’m a little nuts. I’m a lot nuts. All I know is that in the midst of the madness of this world it’s my therapy. The music touches my heartstrings.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

16. “I had lots of friends who were fighting in Vietnam and I am still friends with veterans of the war.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

17. “Give me a wave I can ride upon, come and show your strength to me.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

18. “Getting lost in her loving is your first mistake.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

19. “I took the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face from a folk singer called Bonnie Dobson. I knew her and she had a record with that track on it.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

20. “Don Quixote was a song for a 1969 Michael Douglas movie called Hail Hero! I wrote the title song for the film and they also used the Don Quixote one I had submitted.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

21. “All that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

22. “The strength of his will was the tool of his trade.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

23. “I never got really good at hockey.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

24. “You will go with me everywhere. When I’m dreaming, you still share my lonely nights.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

25. “I’m not really a bird person or an Audubon guy who studies them, but as I was around them, they interested me.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

26. “A lot of people influenced me as I was learning but probably Bing Crosby was the most influential, because I would hear his Christmas albums, which my parents played a lot.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

27. “I liked the American folk style of Woody Guthrie.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

28. “When love is true there is no truer occupation.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

29. “It seems so lucky to just to have the right of telling you with all my might, you’re beautiful tonight.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

30. “I once performed The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to about 15 sea captains. The song was about a ship that broke in half and sank.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

31. “Think about the fool who by his virtue can be found in a most unusual situation playing jester to the clown.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

32. “I never really had stage nerves but I did have had trouble getting up to the right energy level. For a long time I drank. I drank up until 1982 and then I gave up alcohol.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

33. “You just get the vibes of your surroundings and it rubs off on you.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

34. “She is my flower and she blooms for the one who loves her best.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

35. “Everything is trust, all the rest is dust.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

36. “Both the Beatles and The Rolling Stones broke on the music scene the summer I was in England. I can vividly remember hearing She Loves You in August 1963.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

37. “Be calm in the face of all common disgraces.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

38. “I would never have ever dreamed that I would get married again and then all of a sudden you meet somebody. That’s the thing about life. It can be so unexpected.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

39. “There was a TV show called Thank Your Lucky Stars, with the catchphrase “I’ll give it five!” The Beatles and Stones were so popular when they were on it. One week The Beatles were number one and then the Stones were right on their heels.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

40. “See the judge upon the bench who tries the case as best he can, see the wise and wicked ones who feed upon life’s sacred fire, see the soldier with his gun who must be dead to be admired.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

41. “Whitecaps in profusion all around me, but somehow in your eyes I found the strength to sail upon that raging sea.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

42. “My parents got my sister and I to go to church and have piano lessons. We were keen and they could see that.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

43. “Words are for explaining the mistakes we might have made, names are for calling when there is nothing left to say.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

44. “Of course I knew The Band’s Canadian keyboard player, the late Richard Manuel, but I didn’t play that night because I was there as a guest with my record executives. People ask, “why didn’t you play?” If I had known I was going to be playing then I would have been prepared for it.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

45. “There is always something wrong with a song, you can’t be perfect.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

46. “I can remember sitting in a cabin outside of Denver writing that with a can of soup on the stove.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

47. “The giant neon spinning discs are a reminder of the huge role that Sam Sniderman and his store played in the cultural life of Toronto and I believe they should be preserved and remounted in the interests of our city’s heritage.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

48. “If there’s a reason for the way that life is I’d like to find it. After all, who’s life is it?”

— Gordon Lightfoot

49. “I got to sing solo in the junior choir when I was 10 or 11 and won a competition, and my sister’s piano playing improved to a certain level. One time my sister and I worked together. The first song we ever sang in High School was Rags to Riches by Tony Bennett.”

— Gordon Lightfoot

50. “I was a drummer in the bugle band in cadets. I marched. It’s probably quite funny to look back on it.”

— Gordon Lightfoot