Bob Dylan Quotes

May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true. May you always know the truth and see the lights surrounding you. May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong. May you stay forever young.

I can’t act!

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

Steal a little and they throw you in jail Steal a lot and they make you king.

Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

I kinda live where I find myself.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

I’m sick of giving creeps money off my soul.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

I really didn’t consider myself happy or unhappy.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

It’s hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

Peace is the time it takes to reload your rifle.

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

A lot of people don’t like the road, but it’s as natural to me as breathing.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

The purpose of art is to stop time.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Sometimes you just have to bite your upper lip and put sunglasses on.

You always got to be prepared but you never know for what.

People have a hard time accepting anything that overwhelms them.

If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

I was born a long way from where I belong and I am on my way home.

Everything passes, Everything changes, Just do what you think you should do.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

Some formulas are too complex and I don’t want anything to do with them.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

I realize I don’t do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?

My range is limited.

You can’t do something forever.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking, my voice changed… so drastically, I couldn’t believe it myself.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we’re hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary.

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

I have dined with kings, I’ve been offered wings. And I’ve never been too impressed.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.

I’m just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

What good are fans? You can’t eat applause for breakfast. You can’t sleep with it.

Chaos is a friend of mine.

All the money you made will never buy back your soul.