213 Quotes by Bob Dylan

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom. (Quote Meaning)

You can never be wise and be in love at the same time. (Meaning)

I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me. (Quote Meaning)

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame? (Meaning)

Money doesn't talk, it swears. (Quote Meaning)

Don't think twice, it's alright. (Meaning)

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

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.

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do. (Quote Meaning)

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

All I can do is be me, whoever that is. (Quote Meaning)

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People have a hard time accepting anything that overwhelms them.

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

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. (Quote Meaning)

Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain. (Meaning)

Some people are called to be a good sailor. Some people have a calling to be a good tiller of the land. Some people are called to be a good friend. You have to be the best at whatever you are called at. Whatever you do. You ought to be the best at it – highly skilled. It's about confidence, not arrogance. You have to know that you're the best whether anybody else tells you that or not. And that you'll be around, in one way or another, longer than anybody else. Somewhere inside of you, you have to believe that.

How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see?

You need something to open up a new door, to show you something you seen before but overlooked a hundred times or more

Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to The Smithsonian. Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn't make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.

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

Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn't work.

There's beauty in the silver singing river There's beauty in the sunrise in the sky But none of these and nothing else can match the beauty That I remember in my true love's eyes

You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.

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If you need somebody you can trust, trust yourself

Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.

They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.

If I lived my life by what others were thinkin', the heart inside me would've died.

Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them. (Quote Meaning)

May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong, may you stay forever young.

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way.

Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than those who are most content.

There is nothing so stable as change. (Meaning)

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

No reason to get excited,' the thief, he kindly spoke, There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.

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.

Sometimes the silence can be like thunder. (Meaning)

The corporations have taken over. Even in the recording studio. Actually, the corporate companies have taken over American life most everywhere. Go coast to coast and you will see people wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food. Everything is processed.

I've always been the kind of person that doesn't like to trespass, but sometimes you just find yourself over the line.

I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours. (Meaning)

A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Happiness is a state of bliss. Just because you're satisfied one moment - saying yes, it's a good meal, makes me happy - well, that's not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Time is your soul mate. Children are happy. But they haven't really experienced ups and downs yet. I'm not exactly sure what happiness even means. I don't know if I personally could define it.

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

Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner. Really, time is your soul mate.

You can't be wise and in love at the same time. (Meaning)

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

Your mind is a your temple, keep it beautiful and free. Don't let an egg get laid in it by something you can't see.

It's not important what other people call you. If you yourself know you're a fake, that's tougher to live with.

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

Half of the people can be part right all of the time, Some of the people can be all right part of the time. I think Abraham Lincoln said that. 'I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,' I said that.

May you have a strong foundation when the winds of change shift...and may you be forever young.

Dealing with my own life takes priority over other people dealing with my life.

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 there's some kind of change.

In songs, you have to tell people about something they didn't see and weren't there for, and you have to do it as if you were.

If you try to be anyone but yourself, you will fail; if you are not true to your own heart, you will fail. Then again, there's no success like failure

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

A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding. (Quote Meaning)

The times they are a-changing. (Meaning)

There are those who worship loneliness, I'm not one of them In this age of fiberglass I'm searching for a gem The crystal ball up on the wall hasn't shown me nothing yet I've paid the price of solitude, but at last I'm out of debt

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

You get older. You start having hopes for other people rather than yourself.

No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky. (Meaning)

What drives me to you, drives me insane.

They say everything can be replaced, Yet every distance is not near. So I remember every face Of every man who put me here. I see my light come shining From the west unto the east. Any day now, any day now, I shall be released.

I've never been able to understand the seriousness of it all, the seriousness of pride. People talk, act, live as if they're never going to die. And what do they leave behind? Nothing. Nothing but a mask.

The dirt of gossip blows into my face and the dust rumors cover me. But if the arrow is straight and the point is slick, it can pierce through dust no matter how thick.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

The purpose of art is to stop time. (Meaning)

He not busy being born is busy dying. (Quote Meaning)

There must be some kind of way out of here,' said the joker to the thief.

Some times I think this whole world Is one big prison yeard Some of us are prisoners The rest of us are guards

Don't Ask Me Nothing About Nothing, I Just Might Tell You the Truth

For whose sake did you live, for whose sake did you die? Forgive me, baby, for what I didn't do.

All the people we used to know, they're an illusion to me now.

Being on tour is like being in limbo. It's like going from nowhere to nowhere.

Peace is the time it takes to reload your rifle.

Don't matter how much money you got, there's only two kinds of people: there's saved people and there's lost people.

The harmonica is the world's best-selling musical instrument. You're welcome.

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's AT somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming. And, as long as you can stay in that realm you'll sort of be alright.

People disagreeing everywhere you look makes you wanna stop and read a book.

Don't follow leaders. (Meaning)

Music attracts the angels in the universe.

He swift don't win the race. It goes to the worthy, who can divide the word of truth.

I just don't hear anyone else making the music I'm making in my head, so I'll have to do it myself.

In 1975,Bob Dylan was almost 10 years past his prime - and then he released the best album of his career, Blood on the Tracks. Written and recorded amid a painful divorce, Blood on the Tracks is proof that heartbreak makes great art - just as many of the albums that followed were the opposite.

Don't criticize what you can't understand. (Meaning)

Happiness is not on my list of priorities. I just deal with day-to-day things. If I'm happy, I'm happy – and if I'm not, I don't know the difference... Knowing that you are the person you were put on this earth to be – that's much more important than just being happy.

The picture you have in your mind of what you're about will come true.

A cat's meow and cow's moo, I can recite them all.

Passion is a young man's game. Young people can be passionate. Older people gotta be more wise. I mean, you're around awhile, you leave certain things to the young. Don't try to act like you're young. You could really hurt yourself.

Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow that it passes through.

I'll remember you. When I've forgotten all the rest. You to me were true. You to me were the best.

You're going to die. You're going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we're just going to be gone. The world's going to go on without us. All right, now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself, you decide for yourself.

Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb. (Meaning)

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

The purpose of music is to elevate the spirit and inspire. Not to help push some product down your throat. It puts you in tune with your own existence. Sometimes you really don't know how you feel, but really good music can define how you feel... someone who's telling me where he's been that I haven't and what it's like there - somebody whose life I can feel.

If you don't believe there's a price for this sweet paradise, just remind me to show you the scars.

I fought with my twin, the enemy within. (Meaning)

My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it...In writing songs I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie...It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs...I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.

All right, I'll take a chance. I will fall in love with you. If i'm a fool you can have the night, you can have the morning too. Can you cook and sew. make flowers grow. Do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all or is your love in vain?

We have never arrived. We are in a constant state of becoming. (Meaning)

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.

What looks large from a distance, close up ain’t never that big.

Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said, Bob, why are you resisting me? I said, I'm not resisting you! He said, You gonna follow me? I said, I've never thought about that before! He said, When you're not following me, you're resisting me.

The inmates and prisoners, I found they were my kind, and it was there inside the bars I found my peace of mind.

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

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.

Creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won't invite what's not there to begin with.

Music can save people, but it can't in the commercial way it's being used. It's just too much. It's pollution.

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

A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life and certainly there's no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness.

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

God, I'm glad I'm not me.

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.

You have to work out where your place is. And who you are. But we're all spirit. That's all we are, we're just walking dressed up in a suit of skin, and we're going to leave that behind.

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

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

It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be. (Meaning)

Let the dead bury the dead, your time will come. (Meaning)

Sometimes I'm thinkin' I'm Too high to fall Other times I'm thinkin' I'm So low I don't know If I can come up at all

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

The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots.

The future for me is already a thing of the past - You were my first love and you will be my last

People call you this or that. But I can't respond because then it seems like I'm defensive, you know, what does it matter, really?

Ring the bells for the blind and deaf. (Meaning)

You're gonna have to serve somebody. (Meaning)

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

If there's an original thought out there, I could use one right now.

You'll never be greater than yourself.

Let me ask you one question Is your money that good Will it buy you forgiveness Do you think that it could I think you will find When your death takes its toll All the money you made Will never buy back your soul

When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke.

Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening. Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing. Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter.

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

You don't write a song to sit there on a page. You write it to sing it.

He did ten years in Attica, reading Nietzsche and Wilhelm Reich.

Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.

Don't get up gentlemen. I'm only passing through! (Meaning)

It's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you.

What kind of alchemy could create a perfume that would make a reaction to a person lukewarm, indifferent and apathetic?If such a scent could be made I'd like some.

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

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn't possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

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

There are things I could say. But I don't.

I believe that instinct is what makes a genius a genius.

Now, each of us has his own special gift And you know this was meant to be true. And if you don't underestimate me I won't underestimate you.

Never make it perfect.

You have to know that you're the best whether anybody else tells you that or not. And that you'll be around, in one way or another, longer than anybody else. Somewhere inside of you, you have to believe that.

Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin' For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'.

There's a lot of false prophets around and that's the trouble. People say they think they know what's right and other people get people to follow them because they have a certain type of charisma, and there's always people willing to take over. People want a leader. And there will be more and more of them.

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?

I want to use songs that everybody knows or thinks they know. I want to show them a different side of it and open up that world in a more unique way. You have to believe what the words are saying and the words are as important as the melody. Unless you believe the song and have lived it, there's little sense in performing it. I never wanted to be a singer that

The song was there before me, before I came along. I just sorta came down and just sorta took it down with a pencil, but it was there before I came around.

let me forget about today until tomorrow (Meaning)

The people in my songs are all me.

They self-inflict punishment on their own broken lives, put their faith in their possessions, in their jobs, or their wives.

It is the first line that gives the inspiration and then it's like riding a bull. Either you just stick with it, or you don't.

Folk songs are evasive-the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn't be comfortable with it any other way. A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who's playing and who's listening.

I'll stand over your grave 'til I'm sure that you're dead.

Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now.

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

If you don't underestimate me, I won't underestimate you. (Meaning)

Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore. (Meaning)

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

One should never be where one does not belong.

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

I wanted to understand things and then be free of them. I needed to learn how to telescope things, ideas. Things were too big to see all at once, like all the books in the library-everything laying around on all the tables. You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right.

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?

Well, I try my best to be just like I am, But everybody wants you to be just like them, They sing while you slave and I just get bored

The worth of things can't be measured by what they cost but by what the cost you to get it, that if anything costs you your faith or your family, then the price is too high, and that there are some things that will never wear out.

Well now what's the use in dreamin' You got better things to do Dreams never did work for me anyway Even when they did come true

Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.

We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spiritual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it's not going to do anything for you.

You say love is just a four letter word. (Meaning)

There's a wall between you and what you want and you got to leap it.

Truth is like a waterslide-only fun when it's slippery and wet.

Frank [Sinatra] sang to you, not at you, like so many pop singers today. Even singers of standards. I never wanted to be a singer that sings at somebody. I've always wanted to sing to somebody. I would have gotten that subliminally from Frank many years ago. Hank Williams did that, too. He sang to you.

Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game.

Every pleasure's got an edge of pain, pay your ticket and don't complain

I'm sittin' on my watch so I can be on time.

the only thing i knew how to do was to keep on keeping on

The longer you live, the better you get.

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands

The Rolling Stones are truly the greatest rock and roll band in the world and always will be. The last too. Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop-rock, you name it... you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first and the last and no one's ever done it better.

If you like someone's work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years.

Loneliness, tenderness, high society, notoriety, you fight for the throne and you travel alone.

Because Dickens and Dostoyevsky and Woody Guthrie were telling their stories much better than I ever could, I decided to stick to my own mind.

Call me any name you like I will never deny it.

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

There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again.

Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it's available. When the cost comes down, look out!

People's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive.

To live outside the law, you must be honest. (Meaning)

Love is all there is, it makes the world go 'round Love and only love, it can't be denied No matter what you think about it You just won't be able to do without it Take a tip from one who's tried

The land of milk and honey, they say it is the land of money.

It pays to know who your friends are but it also pays to know you ain't got any friends.

We don't see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it - everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life.

You've got to lose your passion for dumbness.

In writing songs, I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.

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

DESTINY is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about WILL COME TRUE. (Meaning)

your problem is that wanna better word for world

You could listen to Woody Guthrie songs and actually learn how to live.

He's hell bent for destruction, he's afraid and confused, and his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.

I failed to communicate, that's why I chose to leave

Got no religion. Tried a bunch of different religions. The churches are divided. Can't make up their minds and neither can I.

I'm looking for a woman who's head is mixed up like mine.

How many deaths will it take 'till we know that too many people have died?

The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don't think they have titles.

Every day your memory grows dimmer - it doesn't haunt me like it did before.

Once I can focus in on something, I just play it in my mind until an idea comes from out of nowhere, and it's usually the key to the whole song. It's the idea that matters. It's like electricity was around long before Edison harnessed it.

Art can lead you to God. I think that's the purpose of everything. If it's not doing that, what's it doing? It's leading you the other way. It's certainly not leading you nowhere.

I'm not going to read any of these magazines. I mean, because they've just got too much to lose by printing the truth. You know that.

There's no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They have got nothing to do with it. I'm thinking about the general people and when they get hurt.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools, I've got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

Some things are too terrible to be true.

Black is the Color and none is the number (Meaning)

Well, you always know who you are. I just don't know who I'm gonna become.

They asked me for some collateral and I pulled down my pants.

When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to loose. (Meaning)