Woodstock Quotes

• Woodstock was not about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was about spirituality, about love, about sharing, about helping each other, living in peace and harmony.

  Richie Havens

  Love, Spiritual, Peace

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• Describing Woodstock as the "big bang," I think that's a great way to describe it, because the important thing about it wasn't how many people were there or that it was a lot of truly wonderful music that got played.

  David Crosby

  Thinking, People, Important

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• Woodstock was both a peaceful protest and a global celebration.

  Richie Havens

  Peaceful, Celebration, Protest

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• But when I played Woodstock, I'll never forget that moment looking out over the hundreds of thousands of people, the sea of humanity, seeing all those people united in such a unique way. It just touched me in a way that I'll never forget.

  Edgar Winter

  Unique, Sea, People

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• The Boston Globe: The Woodstock Music and Art Festival will surely go down in history as a mass event of great and positive significance in the life of the country ... That this many young people could assemble so peaceably and with such good humor in a mile-square area ... speaks volumes about their dedication to the ideal of respect for the dignity of the individual ... In a nation beset with a crescendo of violence, this is a vibrantly hopeful sign. If violence is infectious, so, happily, is nonviolence.

  Michael Lang

  Country, Art, Dedication

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• Though it's frequently portrayed as this crazy, unbridled festival of rain-soaked, stoned hippies dancing in the mud, Woodstock was obviously much more than that - or we wouldn't still be talking about it in 2009. People of all ages and colors came together in the fields of Max Yasgur's farm.

  Richie Havens

  Crazy, Hippie, Rain

  "Richie Havens in his own words" by Richie Havens, www.cnn.com. April 23, 2013.

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• Over the years Woodstock got glorified and romanticised and became the event that symbolised Utopia. It's the last page of our collective memory of the age of innocence. Then things turned ugly and would never be the same again.

  Ang Lee

  Birthday, Memories, Years

  12 Copy quote

• This isn't the Democratic party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of Woodstock hippies. I was at Woodstock--I built the stage. And when everything fell apart, and people were fighting for peanut butter sandwiches, it was the National Guard who came in and saved the same people who were protesting them. So when Hillary Clinton a few years ago wanted to build a Woodstock memorial, I said it should be a statue of a National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie.

  John Ratzenberger

  Father, Hippie, Party

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• Woodstock happened in August 1969, long before the Internet and mobile phones made it possible to communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere. It was a time when we werent able to witness world events or the horrors of war live on 24-hour news channels.

  Richie Havens

  War, Phones, August

  "Commentary: Woodstock, world's biggest family reunion" by Richie Havens, www.cnn.com. August 12, 2009.

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• When they said "Make love, not war" at Woodstock, they never imagined that one would become as dangerous as the other.

  Jay Leno

  War, Making Love, Said

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• He dreamed of amassing musicians from all over the world in Woodstock and they would sit in a field in a circle and play and play. It didn't matter what key or tempo or what melody, they would keep on playing through their discordance until they found a common language.

  Patti Smith

  Keys, Play, Circles

  Patti Smith (2010). “Just Kids”, p.169, A&C Black

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• The Woodstock Film festival is among the finest of a dying breed: a festival that isn’t trying to sell you anything, but simply and beautifully celebrating the art & craft of filmmaking.

  Ethan Hawke

  Art, Dying, Trying

  "Toolkit | Meet the Woodstock Film Festival Programmers (In Their Own Words)" by Brian Brooks, www.indiewire.com. June 24, 2011.

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• The only reason Woodstock was necessary is because they didn't have iTunes.

  Daniel Tosh

  Funny, Reason, Itunes

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• At the time of Woodstock, I was just 13, but I used to see these exotic hippy creatures and I did look on with envy. How could you not? In an ideal world, I would have loved to have been a hippy - but I might have been a bit strait-laced. It was my fantasy.

  Imelda Staunton

  Envy, Looks, Exotic

  11 Copy quote

• When Woodstock ended on Monday morning, over 600 acres of garbage was left behind on Max Yasgur's farm. It took over 400 volunteers and $100,000 to remove it all.

  Shawn Amos

  Monday, Morning, Volunteer

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• Woodstock is well known because this country is so hyped on amount. It was big. Half a million people doesn't necessarily mean something is good. It just means it's big.

  Grace Slick

  Country, Mean, People

  "What Grace Slick is doing now". Interview with Denise Quan, www.cnn.com. August 17, 2009.

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• Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'.

  Pat Buchanan

  Christian, Teacher, Children

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• Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.

  William S. Burroughs

  Sex, Hippie, Coffee

  The Adding Machine "Remembering Jack Kerouac" (1985)

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• Woodstock was about the closest thing to anarchy I've ever seen in my whole life, and I didn't like it.

  Billie Joe Armstrong

  Anarchy, Whole Life, Closest

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• I'm higher than a hippie at Woodstock.

  Ray Hudson

  Hippie, Higher

  "With Hudson, no meltdown for Fusion / Miami coach riding high atop the MLS" by Dwight Chapin, www.sfgate.com. July 03, 2001.

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• It's going to be a combination Scopes trial, revolution in the streets, Woodstock Festival and People's Park, all rolled into one.

  Abbie Hoffman

  People, Trials, Festivals

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• Woodstock - I didn't see anybody play, except when I was standing backstage waiting to go on, because it was so muddy. And the weather was so horrible, you literally couldn't get there except by helicopter.

  Grace Slick

  Play, Weather, Waiting

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• If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there, it would've been like Woodstock.

  Joss Whedon

  Vampire, Said, Slayer

  "Buffy the Vampire Slayer (School Hard)". TV Series, www.imdb.com. September 29, 1997.

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• After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.'

  Kirk Hammett

  Brother, Stars, Air Guitar

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• But, what did happen is I went to Woodstock as a member of the audience. I did not show up there with a road manager and a couple of guitars. I showed up with a change of clothes and a toothbrush.

  John Sebastian

  Couple, Guitar, Clothes

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