Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light"—that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that.… The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.

About Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 69-year career. Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of...

More quotations from Bob Dylan

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it—don't back down and don't give up—then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.

—Bob Dylan

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

—Bob Dylan

success

There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.

—Bob Dylan

heroes

He not busy being born is busy dying.

—Bob Dylan

birth

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

—Bob Dylan

music the world

More quotations tagged with “songs”

Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.

—Margaret Mead

prayer energy songs dancing

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another.

—Frank Zappa

love power change songs

I wrote a song, but I can't read music, so I don't know what it is. Every once in a while I'll be listening to the radio, and I say, "I think I might have written that.

—Steven Wright

music listening radio songs

Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart, and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

—Frederick Douglass

history heart sorrow tears unhappiness slavery songs relief

A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.

—Henry Giles

memory music songs sermons

History

23 Nov 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light" — that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. . . . The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.