Connexions Quotations
Utah Phillips
Quotes
|
The earth is not dying, she is being murdered. And we know who is killing her and we have their names and addresses.
- Utah Phillips
|
|
Kids don’t have a little brother working in the coal mine,
they don’t have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast.
Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws.
Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for,
they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That’s why I sing these songs.
That’s why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit!
- Utah Phillips
|
|
The long memory is the most radical idea in America. That long memory has been taken away from us.
You haven’t gotten it in your schools. You’re not getting it on your television.
You’re being leapfrogged from one crisis to the next. Mass media contributed to that by taking the great movements that
we’ve been through and trivializing important events. No, our people’s history is like one long river.
It flows down from way over there. And everything that those people did and everything they lived flows down to me,
and I can reach down and take out what I need, if I have the courage to go out and ask questions.
- Utah Phillips
|
|
Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world.
- Utah Phillips
|
Read more about Utah Phillips.
