Dave Van Ronk

“We are all tourists in history, and irony is the only protection.”

“In my experience, the best creative work is never done when one is unhappy.”

“Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.”

“I'm not a politician, I'm a musician.”

“Art is the last thing to do with politics. It's the first thing to do with humanity.”

“Humor is the socially acceptable way of being angry at the world.”

“There's nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know.”

“I always figured that if I was going to be a mess, I might as well be a loud mess.”

“As a musician, you have to be a bit of a magpie, you see shiny things and you grab them.”

“Folk music is the original signal-to-noise ratio.”

“The whole point of collaboration is that you give and take from each other, and that's how you create things that are totally new.”