Cass Elliot quotes
Cass Elliot was an American singer, best known as a member of the legendary pop group The Mamas and the Papas. Her powerful voice and charismatic presence made her a beloved figure of the 1960s music scene. She greatly influenced generations of vocalists with her distinctive style and spirit. Here are 31 of her quotes:
I think the most successful way to overthrow any government is through infiltration. It's been proven for years. The dream, of course, is that there is going to be a fantastic cataclysm, and that tomorrow we have Adlai Stevenson in the White House. That's not going to happen, and not because Adlai Stevenson is dead. The reason it's not going to happen is that kind of overthrow is not possible. So I will work in the only way I know how, and that is within the establishment - because that is the only existing program. Let someone come up with another one and if it's good I'd do it in a second.
Cass Elliot
I would love, in all honesty, to do another album with the Mamas and Papas sometime. I miss them. We're still friends and we want to be friends. Because you break up a successful group, which is really what I did, you know, there's some kind of karma here. I don't feel guilty about it; I left the group because I had to. That was being honest.
Cass Elliot
Let's take the people who have latent thoughts about maybe the United States isn't always right. They hear a song like "Give a Damn" and maybe it'll awaken them. If it makes you cross that bridge between apathy and effective participation, that's great. There's so much talk about the Drug Generation and songs about drugs. That's stupid. They aren't songs about drugs; they're about life. Music can play a huge part, because it's the international communicative force.
Cass Elliot
My philosophy is I'm gonna fight as hard as I can to keep all the bad things from happening. But if they are gonna happen and I happen to be in the city where they are happening - like in the song, "California Earthquake" - then there's not much I can do about it. I can't uproot my whole life, just because I have a feeling that things may not work out all right. There's also always the chance that everything is going to be just swell, guys. Just hang in there. But I don't think it can happen on it's own.
Cass Elliot
I've always wanted to go to England; I've always felt a tremendous drawing to England - especially the Elizabethan period. I felt I was familiar with a lot of it - more than what I was familiar with from what I read and studied in school. I went to England. I started driving. I drove to Stonehenge and found that I had been there. It was familiar to me. I went to the tower of London and knew that I had been there. It was more than just feeling vibrations, which a lot of people can do - feel, you know, vibrations of a place that has antiquity screaming through it. It was an irrefutable fact. It was like coming home for me.
Cass Elliot
I know very few who are willing to die for their convictions. I wouldn't be hit on the head with a billy club or have mace squirted in my face. When I was younger and a radical at American University maybe... as a matter of fact, I was at the march on the Pentagon just last year, right in the front taking pictures, just being there to find out what was happening, and I was knocked down and stepped on. I don't want to do that again. It didn't accomplish anything. They lied about everything that happened. Everything in the newspapers were just lies.
Cass Elliot
I would say that there are certain glittering generalities that can be made about every sign that will hold true about everybody who's a member of that sign. For instance, if you had been a Virgo, you would have understood how I hate to be late. I broke up a group I was in once called The Big Three because one of the guys was chronically late and I couldn't take it. I feel when you're supposed to be some place on time, you're there on time. You don't hang people up. It doesn't matter if you're the President of the United States. That's not what you are here for, to hang people up. When I know somebody's sign, and I usually know everybody's sign whether they tell me or not - after getting into this for several years - it helps me to deal with them. Usually I'd rather let people deal with me. That's a total ego hang up, but that's where it's at.
Cass Elliot
I hope these babies have a world to live in. I hope they have a place to go, a land to walk on. I remember when I was ten years old, in Washington, D.C., and I lived with fear of the atom bomb that would keep me awake nights and make me wake up screaming. I used to babysit for my younger brother and sister and I'd be terrified if I heard a siren, a police car, or an ambulance. I'd say, "My God, what if this is it! How do I protect them?" We used to have duck-and-cover exercises in school, where they'd ring a bell at any time of the day, sometimes five or six times a day, and we'd crawl under our desks and put our hands like this to protect the back of our necks from the bomb. We all carried that with us.
Cass Elliot
