Utah Phillips Quotes

Cause the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked. Hmmmm. ~ Utah Phillips

The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses. ~ Utah Phillips

But they lived those extraordinary lives that can never be lived again. And in the living of them, they gave me a history that is more profound, more beautiful, more powerful, more passionate, and ultimately more useful, than the best damn history book I ever read. ~ Utah Phillips

Yes, the long memory is the most radical idea in this country. It is the loss of that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we're going, but where we want to go. ~ Utah Phillips

Chris Chandler is the best performance poet I have ever seen. ~ Utah Phillips

It is better to be likable than to be talented. ~ Utah Phillips

I created my own party. It's called the Sloth and Indolence Party, and I'm running as an anarchist candidate in the best sense of that word. I've studied the presidency carefully. ~ Utah Phillips

Children, be worried when they call you America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they've done to the other natural resources? ~ Utah Phillips

I'm here to change the world, and if I am not, I am probably wasting my time. ~ 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

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

My pacifism came after I joined the army and was shipped over to Korea. There was a little one-room orphanage there called Song-do. There were 180 babies in there, and they were GI babies. The U.S. government would not acknowledge this, and the Korean government had nothing to do with them. They were living on a 100-pound bag of rice a month. Some of those kids, when they were old enough, would go out and shine shoes. They would show up at the gate of our compound to shine shoes, and you'd swear they were looking for their fathers. ~ Utah Phillips

What I really learned in the army was how to be a pacifist. ~ Utah Phillips

Oh, mercy, I think we're all storytellers, you know. You think of the excuses you told your parents for why you got home late. I just never gave it up. ~ Utah Phillips

The most American thing you can do is to stifle dissent. ~ Utah Phillips

I didn't know what exhausted me emotionally until that moment, and I realized that the experience of being a soldier, with unlimited license for excess, excessive violence, excessive sex, was a blueprint for self-destruction. Because then I began to wake up to the idea that manhood, as passed onto me by my father, my scoutmaster, my gym instructor, my army sergeant, that vision of manhood was a blueprint for self-destruction and a lie, and that was a burden that I was no longer able to carry. It was too difficult for me to be that hard. I said, "OK, Ammon, I will try that." He said, "You came into the world armed to the teeth. With an arsenal of weapons, weapons of privilege, economic privilege, sexual privilege, racial privilege. You want to be a pacifist, you're not just going to have to give up guns, knives, clubs, hard, angry words, you are going to have lay down the weapons of privilege and go into the world completely disarmed. ~ Utah Phillips

The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. You're
born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you
assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to
which you resist is the degree to which you are free ... ~ Utah Phillips

It's nice to know there are some things in early 21st-century post-industrial culture that don't change very fast. I am one of those. ~ Utah Phillips

I tramped. When I was on the freight trains, I wasn't looking for work. I was looking to go from place to place without paying any money. ~ Utah Phillips

I guarantee, that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out, shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing ... Which is to say, if you want something done, don't come to me to do it for you; you got to get together and figure out how to do it yourselves. Is that a deal? ~ Utah Phillips

The big system can be pretty overwhelming. We know that we can't beat them by competing with them. What we can do is build small systems where we live and work that serve our needs as we define us and not as they 're defined for us. The big boys in their shining armor are up there on castle walls hurling their thunderbolts. We're the ants patiently carrying sand a grain at a time from under the castle wall. We work from the bottom up. The knights up there don't see the ants and don't know what we're doing. They'll figure it out only when the wall begins to fall. It takes time and quiet persistence. Always remember this: They fight with money and we resist with time, and they're going to run out of money before we run out of time ~ Utah Phillips

You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable natural resources?! Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear cut in the forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They're going to strip mine your soul. They're going to clear cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist, because the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked! ~ Utah Phillips

The most important movement in the world is the feminist movement. If we can really figure out what's going on between men and women, the other problems will take care of themselves. I'm sure of it. ~ Utah Phillips

When I was in Utah there, first learning the kind of music I love, my favorite singer was T. Texas Tyler. So my friend, Norman Ritchie, the traveling teenage sage, started calling me U. Utah Phillips. ~ Utah Phillips

I have seen that our best presidents were the do-nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a president who does things, we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything at all, if he gets up at night to go the bathroom, somehow, mystically, trouble will ensue. ~ Utah Phillips

When you have an engagement, at least in my world, the world that I create for myself, an engagement doesn't begin when you hit the stage and end when you leave the stage. It begins when you hit the city limits, and it ends when you leave the city limits. ~ Utah Phillips

Folk music isn't owned by anybody. It is owned by everybody, like the national parks, the postal system, and the school system. It's our common property. There is nobody's name on it. Nobody can make money on it. It's not copywritten. ~ Utah Phillips

Q: What can people do to defend their civil liberties?

Phillips: I'm a pacifist, but the most American thing you can do is to dissent, and the most un-American thing you can do is to stifle dissent. When you feel threatened by the suppression of your liberties, you exercise them to the nth degree, you scream your head off every chance you get. You talk to people you don't agree with. Really good advice: Every day, talk to at least two people who don't agree with you. It's the only way it is going to get done. ~ Utah Phillips

You cannot know a wild thing. ~ Gin Phillips

I never thought I'd be traveling the world supporting my music. Everybody seems to really enjoy the music because it comes from me, and I'm proud of it. ~ Phillip Phillips

Never scorn a woman. They get violent. ~ Pepper Phillips

Find what brings you joy and go there. ~ Jan Phillips

The public is the tribunal before which all art is judged - not the critics or the academies. The public is the artist's only patron, and has certain fundamental rights. It will submit to education, and will respond to suggestion, but it will not be bullied. ~ Walter J. Phillips

You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency. ~ Wendell Phillips

Old radicals never changed. They just got law degrees and updated their bag of tricks. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Set yourself earnestly to see what you are made to do, and then set yourself earnestly to do it. ~ Phillips Brooks

The only reason I kissed you was as a distraction from what I really wanted to do, which was strangle you. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I never ever Google myself. That way madness lies. ~ Sally Phillips

I love chicken and anything to do with chicken. I love anything that's homemade. Oh, and BBQ. And I love green beans. There is so much good food. I can go on and on and on. ~ Phillip Phillips

It is easy to be independent when all behind you agree with you, but the difficulty comes when nine hundred and ninety-nine of your friends think you are wrong. ~ Wendell Phillips

When I'm a brunette, it's four times harder to hail a taxi. Then I go blonde again, and suddenly there are taxis everywhere. ~ Sally Phillips

It is difficult to enjoy people for whom we have waited too long. And in this familiar situation, which evokes such intensities of feeling, we wait and we try to do something other than waiting, and we often get bored - the boredom of protest that is always a screen for rage. ~ Adam Phillips

I see my work as a continuum, moving from book to book. ~ Jayne Anne Phillips

Be the best at what you're good at ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

We are not called to give lifestyle tips or the self-help plumbing that today's worldly men and women crave. The Bible says the gospel is the "power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." (Romans 1:16b), so we must proclaim it. ~ Richard D. Phillips

Even with only two people on board, where maintenance is a large piece of our working day, we still have time to do scientific research. We have to be ready to support those Shuttle visits in a lot of different ways. ~ John L. Phillips

He settled his hat back into position. She was a rookie in her first big game, and he'd never let her see how close she'd come to unseating a champion ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

If you're not doing something different, you're not doing anything. ~ Sam Phillips

Because she is too ugly to kiss goodbye. ~ Bum Phillips

There are hundreds of thousands of kids walking around with a sleeping monster inside them. ~ Mackenzie Phillips

If we think of the atonement as a bridge spanning a great river, Arminians see it as infinitely wide, but not reaching all the way to the far bank; Calvinists hold that the atonement is a narrow bridge, wide enough only for the elect, but reaching all the way to the other side. We believe that Christ's death actually saves those for whom He died. ~ Richard D. Phillips

I don't think I'm a flaming radical. ~ Jeanne Phillips

Taking part in an Olympics on home ground is something you dream about. ~ Zara Phillips

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie. ~ Todd Phillips

Sometimes we focus on other' flaws so we don't have to focus on our own. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

while the ludic impulse may be strong in some, it is not, and cannot be, strong in everyone, for the simple reason that not all people have access to the technologies in question, the time to devote to learning the ins and outs of specific systems, or the energy to play with the tools they've been given. ~ Whitney Phillips

One on God's side is a majority. ~ Wendell Phillips

A study at the University of Utah found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he'll say it is because he and his friend share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the two of them on their attitudes, you'll find out that what they actually share is similar activities. We're friends with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble. We don't seek out friends, in other words. We associate with the people who occupy the same small, physical spaces that we do. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

The Human Resources Scorecard: Measuring the Return on Investment (ButterworthHeinemann, 2001), ~ Patricia Pulliam Phillips

Mr. Phillips! Are you just getting in for the night? And Lord, have mercy! Where are your pants? ~ Will Willingham

Feeling has as much to say as the words do. You can have the greatest words in the world and if they're not believable, they don't strike a chord and they're not said convincingly, it's not a great song. ~ Sam Phillips

Sometimes they ask if you want to hook up your iPod for background music. Do not do this. It's a trap. They'll put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row; "We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie, "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips, "That's What Friends Are For, Various Artists, and "We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie. ~ Tina Fey

I believe that if you feel you are in love, you are in love. By ~ Debora Phillips

I live on a ranch in Utah for now, but I'm gonna move. I've got another ranch to move to, but its location is a secret. When I get there, I'm gonna plow the road in behind me. ~ Wilford Brimley

I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words. ~ Jayne Anne Phillips

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism. ~ Wendell Phillips

It wasn't everyday a guy saw a headless beaver marching down the side of the road, ... ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Never give a golfer an ultimatum unless you're prepared to lose. ~ Pauline Phillips

Reality television hasn't killed documentaries, because there are so many great documentaries still being made, but it certainly has changed the landscape. There is this breed of gimmicky documentary that is basically a reality show. ~ Todd Phillips

The play of sunlight is amusement enough for a lazy man ... ~ Walter J. Phillips

I tell people that I'm a Christian, but I don't think it's giving an insight into who I am or what I'm about. ~ Sally Phillips

I done drew the line. Just like the Alamo. You're either on one side of the line or the other. I don't want to ever leave Texas again. ~ Bum Phillips

President Obama just made his first presidential trip to the state of Utah. Obama spent his time in Utah just like you'd expect - telling people, 'Uh, no, I don't play for the Jazz.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

No realm was too petty: The Ministry of Posts ruled that henceforth when trying to spell a word over the telephone a caller could no longer say "D as in David," because "David" was a Jewish name. The caller had to use "Dora." "Samuel" became "Siegfried." And so forth. "There has been nothing in social history more implacable, more heartless and more devastating than the present policy in Germany against the Jews," Consul General Messersmith told Undersecretary Phillips in a long letter dated September 29, 1933. He wrote, "It is definitely the aim of the Government, no matter what it may say to the outside or in Germany, to eliminate the Jews from German life. ~ Erik Larson