Joan Baez

My father was a physicist and also an activist. My first public protest was with my dad at Stanford. I came by all that honestly.

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.

During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs.

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.

That's all nonviolence is - organized love.

The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation.

Action is the antidote to despair.

I'm lucky to have met so many people who have been involved in peace and who have been peace prize winners.

We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood.

The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10. Non-violence.

Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job.

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?