Top 50 Woody Guthrie Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Take it easy, but take it.”

— Woody Guthrie

2. “This machine kills fascists.”

— Woody Guthrie

Featured in: Resistance Quotes

3. “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”

— Woody Guthrie

4. “This land is your land, this land is my land.”

— Woody Guthrie

5. “I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I aint a gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns.”

— Woody Guthrie

6. “It’s a folk singer’s job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people.”

— Woody Guthrie

7. “I love a good man outside the law, just as much as I hate a bad man inside the law.”

— Woody Guthrie

8. “This land is made for you and me.”

— Woody Guthrie

9. “Some men rob you with a six-gun – others rob you with a fountain pen.”

— Woody Guthrie

10. “Nobody living can ever stop me. As I go walking my freedom highway. Nobody living can make me turn back. This land was made for you and me.”

— Woody Guthrie

11. “I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that.”

— Woody Guthrie

12. “If you want to learn something, just steal it.”

— Woody Guthrie

13. “Love is the only medicine I believe in.”

— Woody Guthrie

14. “I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes. I slept on the ground in the light of the moon. On the edge of the city you’ll see us and then, we come with the dust and we go with the wind.”

— Woody Guthrie

15. “If we fix it so’s you can’t make money on war, we’ll all forget what we’re killing folks for.”

— Woody Guthrie

16. “Was a great high wall there that tried to stop me. Was a great big sign there said private Property but on the back side it didn’t say nothing. That side was made for you and me.”

— Woody Guthrie

17. “Now as through this world I ramble, I see lots of funny men, Some rob you with a six gun, And some with a fountain pen.”

— Woody Guthrie

18. “One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple, by the Relief Office, I saw my people -As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if God blessed America for me.”

— Woody Guthrie

19. “As I went walking That ribbon of highway I saw above me The endless skyway I saw below me The lonesome valley This land was made for you and me.”

— Woody Guthrie

20. “I like to write about wherever I happen to be.”

— Woody Guthrie

21. “Life has a habit of not staying hitched. You got to ride it like you find it.”

— Woody Guthrie

22. “I know the police cause you trouble They cause trouble everywhere But when you die and go to heaven You find no policeman there.”

— Woody Guthrie

23. “Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don’t change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.”

— Woody Guthrie

24. “Anyone who used more than three chords is just showing off.”

— Woody Guthrie

25. “The world is filled with people who are no longer needed – and who try to make slaves of all of us – and they have their music and we have ours.”

— Woody Guthrie

26. “There’s several ways of saying what’s on your mind. And in states and counties where it ain’t too healthy to talk too loud, speak your mind, or even vote like you want to, folks have found other ways of getting the word around. One of the mainest ways is by singing.”

— Woody Guthrie

27. “A song ain’t nothing but a conversation fixed up to where you can talk it over and over without getting tired of it.”

— Woody Guthrie

28. “All of this talking about what’s up in the sky, or down in hell, for that matter, isn’t half as important as what’s right here, right now, right in front of your eyes. Things are tough. Folks broke. Kids hungry. Sick. Everything. And people has got to have more faith in one another, believe in each other. There’s a spirit of some kind we’ve all got. That’s got to draw us all together.”

— Woody Guthrie

29. “The words are the important thing. Don’t worry about tunes. Take a tune, sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you’ve got a new tune.”

— Woody Guthrie

30. “Left wing, right wing, chicken wing.”

— Woody Guthrie

31. “If you walk across my camera I will flash the world your story.”

— Woody Guthrie

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

32. “One day we’ll all find out that all of our songs was just little notes in a great big song!”

— Woody Guthrie

33. “I better quit my talking ’cause I told you all I know But please remember, pardner, wherever you may go The people are building a peaceful world, and when the job is done, That’ll be the biggest thing that man has ever done.”

— Woody Guthrie

34. “The best way to get to know any bunch of people is to go and listen to their music.”

— Woody Guthrie

35. “It’s round the world I’ve traveled; it’s round the world I’ve roamed; but I’ve yet to see an outlaw drive a family from its home.”

— Woody Guthrie

36. “My eyes has been my camera taking pictures of the world and my songs has been my messages that I tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls...”

— Woody Guthrie

37. “You can’t write a good song about a whorehouse unless you’ve been in one.”

— Woody Guthrie

38. “I’d give my life just to lay my head tonight on a bed of California stars.”

— Woody Guthrie

39. “All you can write is what you see.”

— Woody Guthrie

40. “All about a human being is, it’s a great big hoping machine.”

— Woody Guthrie

41. “All of my words, if not well put nor well taken, are well meant.”

— Woody Guthrie

42. “I ain’t a communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life.”

— Woody Guthrie

43. “All of you cowboys, fight for your land.”

— Woody Guthrie

44. “I have decided long ago that my songs and ballads would not get the hugs and kisses of the capitalistic experts.”

— Woody Guthrie

45. “I’m down here looking at the Potomac River; they say George Washington threw a silver dollar across it once. It looks a little bit too far for me to do that trick, but maybe he could. After all, a dollar went further in those days.”

— Woody Guthrie

46. “Then I got a little braver and made up songs telling what I thought was wrong and how to make it right, songs that said what everybody in the country was thinking. And this has held me ever since.”

— Woody Guthrie

47. “Left wing, chicken wing, it don’t make no difference to me.”

— Woody Guthrie

48. “The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine.”

— Woody Guthrie

49. “Let me be known as just the man that told you something you already knew.”

— Woody Guthrie

50. “Uncle Sam took up the challenge in the year of ‘33 For the farmer and the factory and all of you and me. He said, “Roll along Columbia. You can ramble to the sea, But river while you’re ramblin’ you can do some work for me.””

— Woody Guthrie