196 quotes by Pete Seeger (1919-2014), American (Musician)

Quotes About

Peekskill Evening Star

... every ticket purchased for the Peekskill concert will drop nickels and dimes into the basket of an un-American political organization... the time for tolerant silence that signifies approval is running out.

The benefit concert had been organized by a musical group called The People's Artists and it featured baritone Paul Robeson and folk singer Pete Seeger both great musicians with leftist political views. The beneficiary organization was The Civil Rights Congress which was fighting for a stay of execution for six African-American youths sentenced to death in New Jersey. Peekskill, only 25 miles from New York City had 3 major demographic groups: Lower and middle class white workers, middle class blacks who vacationed in the area, and liberal white intellectuals many of whom were Jewish who also vacationed in the area. Robeson had given a speech on Paris a few weeks earlier that was misquoted and the American Legion and others who had been fired up by this editorial and other anti-Communist, anti-Black and anti-Semitic rhetoric. The Concert was attacked by an organized white group who beat ticket holders and staff. The local police did not intervene, and in the aftermath of what had turned into an assault over 700 whites from the Peekskill area applied for membership in the KKK (Klu Klux Klan). See {72167} for Robeson's misquoted statement which was one of the triggers for this assault. The attack galvanized many groups of the area who were not going to let the thugs deny free speech and the following month the concert was performed. The concert itself was free from violence, though marred by the presence of a police helicopter overhead and the flushing out of at least one sniper's nest. An incredible Twenty thousand people showed up. Security, organized by labor unions, was tight with union men standing in a protective circle around the entire concert grounds and sitting with Robeson on the stage. The Musicians performed without incident.

Popular Quotes

Pete Seeger

The first step in solving a problem is admitting there is a problem to be solved.

Pete Seeger

My father, Charles Seeger, got me into the Communist movement. He backed out around '38. I drifted out in the '50s. I apologized for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.

Seeger’s admission was typical of tens of thousands of Americans who had become disillusioned with the fairness, equity, and effectiveness of capitalism during the depression. They were easy prey for Communist propaganda which pointed out all the problems in American society from legal racial discrimination to lack of a social safety net while at the same time lying about the Russian achievements and hiding the horrible abuses of human rights—especially the political murders of millions of people. Then the truth about Russia emerged, Seeger and so many others abandoned the Communist Party as at the same time America was improving its society and beginning to try and deal with the great problem that had plagued America from its inception—racism and slavery.

Pete Seeger

Any idiot can be complicated. It takes a genius to be simple.

Pete Seeger

After visits to several Communist countries (USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, East Germany, Vietnam, China, Cuba), I feel strongly that most "revolutionary" types around the world don't realize the importance of freedom of the press and the air, a right to peaceably assemble and discuss anything, including the dangers of such discussions.

Pete Seeger

Realize that little things lead to bigger things.

Pete Seeger

The world will be solved by millions of small things.

Pete Seeger

I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.

Pete Seeger

Heaven’s Yes. I was hopelessly naïve regarding Joseph Stalin. I thought he just drove too hard.

Seeger had joined the Young Communist League as a young boy, and was a supporter of Joseph Stalin until all the information about Stalin was made public by Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Seeger, along with other Stalin apologists throughout the world realized that the criticisms of Russian Communism under Stalin were not just right wing propaganda.

Pete Seeger

In the sixties, during the Vietnam war, when anarchists and pacifists and socialists, Democrats and Republicans, decent-hearted Americans, all recoiled with horror at the bloodbath, we came together.

Pete Seeger

People are combining traditions like never before and finding somehow a fundamental unity for this human race of ours. I think working with each other as Jeff Haynes has done here-we may be surprised to find what deeper unity all human beings have.

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About the Author

Pete Seeger

Born: May 3, 1919
Died: January 27, 2014
Nationality: American
Profession: Musician, Songwriter, Television Host

Biography

Peter Seeger was an American folk singer and social activist.

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PETE SEEGER

(Peter Seeger)