Top 200 Neil Young Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “My music isn’t anything but me. It has jazz in it, and rock’n’roll, and it has an urgency to it.”

— Neil Young

152. “It’s all very hazy to me now. I’m glad I made it through that stage. It got a little dicey. There were some drugs going on. I remember singing one song for about a day and a half.”

— Neil Young

153. “I’m not the same as I was long ago, I’ve learned some new things and I hope that it shows.”

— Neil Young

154. “It’s stupid to expect perfection from bands because afterall they’re just human beings.”

— Neil Young

155. “I have so many opinions about everything it just comes out during my music. It’s a battle for me. I try not to be preachy. That’s a real danger.”

— Neil Young

156. “I am succeeding because people are talking about how they would do it better.”

— Neil Young

157. “I get into each thing I do, to the point where nothing else matters. I guess I’m an extremist.”

— Neil Young

158. “The way in which the USA and Great Britain delivered Iraq to the Iraqis, the way and means that this played out, that is the endgame.”

— Neil Young

159. “I want to be a reflection of what’s going on and let people draw their own conclusions.”

— Neil Young

160. “There’s two kinds of love, one is wrong and one is right.”

— Neil Young

161. “We don’t build a record. We’re taking a picture of it. We’re not building an image; we’re capturing an image.”

— Neil Young

162. “I live for playing live. All my records are live, since After the Gold Rush, with the exception of Trans and the vocals on Landing on Water.”

— Neil Young

163. “Said the condor to the preying mantis, we’re gonna lose this place just like we lost Atlantis.”

— Neil Young

164. “We need to spread out now in the universe. I think in 100 years we’ll be living on other planets.”

— Neil Young

165. “A job is never truly finished. It just reaches a stage where it can be left on its own for a while.”

— Neil Young

166. “The cutthroat avenues of rock ‘n’ roll, I am fed up with. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

— Neil Young

167. “For whatever you’re doing, for your creative juices, your geography’s got a hell of a lot to do with it. You really have to be in a good place, and then you have to be either on your way there or on your way from there.”

— Neil Young

168. “The person who builds a character makes foes.”

— Neil Young

169. “Our educational system basically strives for normal-which is too bad. Sometimes the exceptional is classified as abnormal and pushed aside.”

— Neil Young

170. “An idea discovered is much better possessed.”

— Neil Young

171. “All I’m doing is writing it down and putting it in a cadence. Once I get into a cadence, then why should I even stop and wonder what it is? You can do that for the rest of your life, but when it’s coming out, you don’t want to stop it.”

— Neil Young

172. “Faith is not reason’s labour, but repose.”

— Neil Young

173. “Being sued by your own record company, that’s even better than receiving a Grammy.”

— Neil Young

174. “You know how the press is: If I mention one mistake, that’s the only thing that bothers me unless I mention all the other ones.”

— Neil Young

175. “I think in some ways – only in some ways – but in some ways, rock and roll has let me down. It really doesn’t leave you a way to grow old gracefully and continue to work.”

— Neil Young

176. “I feel like I could be likened to an old hound circling on a rug for the last five years.”

— Neil Young

177. “It’s a blue album, but it’s not a blues album. I’m not pretending all of a sudden now I’m blues.”

— Neil Young

178. “I don’t have to perform to stay in the public eye anymore. I really don’t. I am who I am and what I do on musical stage these days really makes no difference at all. I already have all the momentum there. I am only doing it because I love to do it.”

— Neil Young

179. “I don’t think there is one president that’s come down the line that hasn’t done something good somewhere.”

— Neil Young

180. “My career is built around a pattern that just keeps repeating itself over and over again. There’s nothing surprising about it at all. My changes are as easy to predict as the sun coming up and down.”

— Neil Young

181. “The Arabic states have to be integrated into the Iraqi reconstruction. We need the help of the Arabic community, which understands its culture. Americans arrive, invade, occupy.”

— Neil Young

182. “People who agree with you already agree with you – you don’t change peoples minds.”

— Neil Young

183. “I don’t like to be labeled, to be anything. I’ve made the mistake before myself of labeling my music, but it’s counter-productive.”

— Neil Young

184. “Commitments are one of the worst things to have in the music business. They’re very annoying.”

— Neil Young

185. “I didn’t really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.”

— Neil Young

186. “Of course you have to support the troops. They’re just kids. They’re doing for their country what’s expected of them.”

— Neil Young

187. “I think I’m going to be making country records for as long as I can see into the future. It’s much more down-home and real.”

— Neil Young

188. “As important as the funds are, the vision is the greatest gift.”

— Neil Young

189. “When I first tried out some hash, smoked some then. And I’ll do it again, if only I had some cash.”

— Neil Young

190. “Studios are passe for me. I’d rather play in a garage, in a truck, or a rehearsal hall, a club, or a basement.”

— Neil Young

191. “I’m not into this judgmental, religious-right kind of thing.”

— Neil Young

192. “Rock and Roll can never die.”

— Neil Young

193. “I don’t like the American media – particularly Fox.”

— Neil Young

194. “I don’t drink anymore myself, I’m moving on. And that’s not to say I won’t drink again. I’m not making any promises, but I don’t think I was a great drinker. Some folks are great drinkers; they drink and tell jokes and laugh their asses off, and they are funny as hell. We buried one of those last week. Life is just a big test, and if you try hard, you fail. If you don’t try too hard and fail a little but have a good time, maybe that is success.”

— Neil Young

195. “I watched the needle take another man.”

— Neil Young

196. “A young man of pleasure is a man of pains.”

— Neil Young

197. “Being a musician enables a person to bend the notes and express things that are inside you, no matter what.”

— Neil Young

198. “There’s an edge to real rock ‘n’ roll. It’s all that matters.”

— Neil Young

199. “On one side the government, the other side the mob.”

— Neil Young

200. “We’re very highly evolved, and we should be very responsible for what we’ve learned.”

— Neil Young