Top 80 Jerry Garcia Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “What a long strange trip it’s been.”

— Jerry Garcia

Featured in: Journey Quotes, Grateful Quotes, Crazy Quotes, Travel Quotes

2. “You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do.”

— Jerry Garcia

3. “You don’t want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one.”

— Jerry Garcia

4. “Sometimes the lights all shining on me, other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it’s been.”

— Jerry Garcia

5. “There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night, and if you go, no one may follow, that path is for your steps alone.”

— Jerry Garcia

6. “We’re like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”

— Jerry Garcia

7. “I think The Grateful Dead kind of represents the spirit of being able to go out and have an adventure in America at large.”

— Jerry Garcia

8. “Nothing left to do but smile.”

— Jerry Garcia

9. “To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe.”

— Jerry Garcia

10. “Live life expecting the worst, hoping for the best, and living for the future!”

— Jerry Garcia

11. “Run faster, jump higher, reach farther, and you’ll always win!”

— Jerry Garcia

12. “Every silver lining has a touch of grey.”

— Jerry Garcia

13. “Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”

— Jerry Garcia

14. “You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t wanna know.”

— Jerry Garcia

15. “You need music, I don’t know why. It’s probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.”

— Jerry Garcia

16. “We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life, a simple life, a good life.”

— Jerry Garcia

17. “The sun will shine in my back door one day...”

— Jerry Garcia

18. “We didn’t invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead. We were just in line to see what was going to happen.”

— Jerry Garcia

19. “Too much of a good thing is just about right.”

— Jerry Garcia

20. “Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul.”

— Jerry Garcia

21. “I equate Deadheads to people that like black licorice. There aren’t many people that like black licorice, but the ones that do, REALLY REALLY like it! Or buttermilk, or whatever.”

— Jerry Garcia

22. “We’ve been trying to sell out for years, nobody’s buying!”

— Jerry Garcia

23. “Truth is something you stumble into when you think you’re going someplace else.”

— Jerry Garcia

24. “Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.”

— Jerry Garcia

25. “If the thunder don’t get ya then the lightning will.”

— Jerry Garcia

26. “We were very fortunate to have a a little time in history when LSD was still legal and were able to experiment with drugs just like we were doing with music.”

— Jerry Garcia

27. “I Don’t Think There’s A Good Excuse For Being Unhappy. I’m Not Particularly Unhappy, But I Know What Pain Is. I think That Life Is Characterized By Pain, Partly. Part Of The Way You Can Tell You’re Alive Is By How Much Pain You’re Experiencing, Or How Little...”

— Jerry Garcia

28. “If you’re able to enjoy something, to devote your life to it or a reasonable amount of time and energy, it will work out for you.”

— Jerry Garcia

29. “I mean, whatever kills you kills you, and your death is authentic no matter how you die.”

— Jerry Garcia

30. “America is still mostly xenophobic and racist. That’s the nature of America, I think.”

— Jerry Garcia

31. “What is life but being conscious? And good and evil are manifestations of consciousness. If you reject one, you’re not getting the whole thing that’s there to be had.”

— Jerry Garcia

32. “All I know is, if you listen to society, you’ll never get anywhere!”

— Jerry Garcia

33. “If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.”

— Jerry Garcia

34. “I think it’s too bad that everybody’s decided to turn on drugs, I don’t think drugs are the problem. Crime is the problem. Cops are the problem. Money’s the problem. But drugs are just drugs.”

— Jerry Garcia

35. “I mean, just because you’re a musician doesn’t mean all your ideas are about music. So every once in a while I get an idea about plumbing, I get an idea about city government, and they come the way they come.”

— Jerry Garcia

36. “Stuff that’s hidden and murky and ambiguous is scary because you don’t know what it does.”

— Jerry Garcia

37. “Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you’ve been to some of those places, you think, ‘How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?’”

— Jerry Garcia

38. “I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I’m more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.”

— Jerry Garcia

39. “Our strong suit is what we do, and our audience.”

— Jerry Garcia

Featured in: Strong Quotes

40. “Whistle through your teeth and spit cuz, it’s Alright.”

— Jerry Garcia

41. “It’s pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.”

— Jerry Garcia

42. “I have all the patience in the world about Sirens. For me it’s not a Grateful Dead project, it’s a Me project.”

— Jerry Garcia

43. “Cats on the bandstand, give them each a big hand, anyone who sweats like that must be all right.”

— Jerry Garcia

44. “I sat down to my supper, twas a bottle of red whiskey.”

— Jerry Garcia

45. “I’m not Beethoven!”

— Jerry Garcia

46. “Done time in the lock-up, done time on the streets. Done time on the upswing, and time in defeat. I know what I’m askin’. I know it’s a lot. Just to say that I love you. Believe it or not.”

— Jerry Garcia

47. “Run faster, jump higher, reach farther, and you’ll always win! live life expecting the worst, hoping for the best, and living for the future! Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”

— Jerry Garcia

48. “It’s all part of it, man.”

— Jerry Garcia

49. “What we do is as American as lynch mobs. America has always been a complex place.”

— Jerry Garcia

50. “Either you were a hoodlum, or you were a puddle on the sidewalk.”

— Jerry Garcia