Bob Dylan (b.1941,) born Robert Allen Zimmerman, is an American popular singer and composer. During his five decades-long career, he has been pop music’s master poet and an ever-changing performer.
Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan formed a rock and roll band in 1955 and played in coffee houses while at the University of Minnesota.
During the 1960s, Dylan productively combined social protest poetry and folk music in albums such as The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1963.) His songs and lyrics became popular with American youth as part of their protest and rights movements. His switch to rock music initially alienated many fans; they jeered him at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Classic albums include Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blood on the Tracks (1975.)
After being less popular during the 1980s and 1990s, Dylan returned to acclaim for such albums as Time Out of Mind and Tempest (2013.) In 2000, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for the soundtrack of the film Wonder Boys.
Dylan’s lyrics have been published and are well-regarded for their poetry and wit. He has been called one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and even one of the greatest poets of all time. In 2008, he was awarded a ‘Special Citation’ from the Pulitzer Board for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture.” Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
The British journalist Howard Sounes produced a popular biography Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (2001.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Bob Dylan
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
Don’t matter how much money you got, there’s only two kinds of people: there’s saved people and there’s lost people.
—Bob Dylan
People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, and then repent.
—Bob Dylan
But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.
—Bob Dylan
Money doesn’t talk, it swears.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Money
In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.
—Bob Dylan
I’ve been up the mountain and I had a choice. Should I come down? So I came down. God said, “Okay, you’ve been up on the mountain, now you go down. You’re on your own, free. Check in later, but now you’re on your own.”
—Bob Dylan
Topics: World
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with their freedom.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Heroes/Heroism, Heroes
People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around — the music and the ideas.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Twentieth Century
Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Maturity
Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.
—Bob Dylan
I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there’s some kind of change.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Future, Thinking
I’m a firm believer in the longer you live, the better you get.
—Bob Dylan
What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Men, Success & Failure, Money, Success
To live outside the law, you must be honest.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Honesty
Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.
—Bob Dylan
It pays to know who your friends are but it also pays to know you ain’t got any friends.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Friendship
All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Equality
Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Travel
Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.
—Bob Dylan
If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Memory, Living
She knows there’s no success like failure, and that failure’s no success at all.
—Bob Dylan
For them that think death’s honesty won’t fall upon them naturally life sometimes must get lonely.
—Bob Dylan
Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world has just gone on. I mean, look at Napoleon –but we went right on. Look at Harpo Marx –the world went around, it didn’t stop for a second. It’s sad but true. John Kennedy, right?
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness
In ceremonies of the horsemen, even the pawn must hold a grudge.
—Bob Dylan
Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Gratitude
I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.
—Bob Dylan
Democracy don’t rule the world, you better get that in your head. This world is ruled by violence, but I guess that’s better left unsaid.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: Violence, Genius
He who is not busy being born is busy dying.
—Bob Dylan
Topics: One liners, Life and Living, Growth
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Stevie Wonder American Singer
Ray Charles American Singer
Carole King American Singer
Billy Joel American Singer
Paul McCartney British Pop Musician
Joan Baez American Singer
Elvis Presley American Musician
Bette Midler American Actress, Singer
George Harrison English Singer
Lou Reed American Musician