“The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail… and I’d never heard it before in my life.”

There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.

In fact when Sweet Honey was ten years old it was too big for me to run, and I knew it, but I ran it for another thirteen years because I couldn’t convince other people to really do it. And this year, I’m not running it.

At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.

If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition.

I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I got my doctorate in 1975.

If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it’s probably not broad enough a coalition.

I just don’t think one person has that much to contribute to any subject

Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn’t have religion

If every moment is sacred and if you are amazed and in awe most of the time when you find yourself breathing and not crazy, then you are in a state of constant thankfulness, worship and humility.

And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs.

I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience

Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You’re scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic.

I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don’t understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.

The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American

Welcome to prekindergarten! You will not die if you discover that there are more lines out there than just your own. In fact, you’ll discover that you will have an advantage if you know more of them!

Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.

In jail I was just like everybody else, I was sitting there praying, feeling caged.

It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see.

Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today.

Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.

I am prepared to oppose a Jim Crow army till I rot in jail.

What really resonated with my students, I think, is that most of the writers we worked with were journalists, and when they saw journalists simply raising questions and being put in jail for that, it did freak them out a little bit.

I ain’t going to jail no more. The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin’ us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin’ now is Black Power!

There are very few people who have committed more to the pro-life discourse than Rob has. He’s spent time in jail. He has really lived it.