The 60 Most Timeless Grateful Dead Quotes For Your Enjoyment

In the mid-sixties, a rock band named the Grateful Dead was formed in California. This band molded together unique forms of music like rock and blues and jazz and country. They became known around the musical scenes for their carefree attitude and long jams with instrumentals break longer than other bands played. Selling more than 35 million albums on a worldwide scale was no easy feat in 1965, but The Grateful Dead wasn’t your average band.

Jerry Garcia is well known as the front man for the band and some of his most popular band mates include Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart. However there have been many more members in the band over the years including Bill Kreutzman, Robert Hunter, Vince Welnick and Ron ‘pigpen’ McKernan to name a few. The music of the Grateful Dead is ageless, timeless and doesn’t care about your race or gender or anything else for that matter. The Dead were all about love and peace and it show in their feel good music. In the modern age, this band is still widely known and respected as rock icons of the 1960s and beyond. Some of their most famous quotes are recorded here for your enjoyment.

Grateful Dead Quotes

1. “The Grass Ain’t Greener, The Wine Ain’t Sweeter, Either Side Of The Hill.” – Grateful Dead

2. For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.” -Jerry Garcia

3.”Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile” – Grateful Dead

4. “Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings” – Grateful Dead

5.”Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.” – Jerry Garcia

6.”Without love in a dream, it will never come true.”- Grateful Dead

7.”If you get confused just listen to the music” – Grateful Dead


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8. “Watch each card you play and play it slow.” – Grateful Dead

9.”We sing a little song before we eat, a little blessing before we eat, and it’s really – we’re thanking the Lord and the Earth for the food that we eat, andit really brings you together in a profound way” – Phil Lesh

10.”Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil “- Jerry Garcia

11.”If you plant ice, you’re gonna harvest wind.” – Grateful Dead

12.”To sing a simple round is truely an enlightening experience” – Phil Lesh

13.”love will see you through.” – Grateful Dead

14.”What good is spilling blood, it will not grow a thing.” – Grateful Dead

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15.”Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills, one man gathers what another man spills.” – Grateful Dead

16.”And the input that we always got from Deadheads, at the moment of making the music, was always a factor.” -Phil Lesh

17. “A selfish heart is trouble, but a foolish heart is worse.” – Grateful Dead

18.”Some folks look for answers, others look for fights.” – Grateful Dead

19.”I’ll drink to your health, share your wealth, run your life, steal your wife.” – Grateful Dead

20.”We can share women, we can share wine. We can share what we got of yours, cause we done shared all of mine.” – Grateful Dead

21.”Every silver lining’s got a touch of grey. – Grateful Dead”

22.”Don’t be a collector of more than you need, got a lot of things growing, but keep watching your seeds.” – Grateful Dead

23.”Standing on the moon with nothing left to do. Lovely view of heaven, but I’d rather be with you.” – Grateful Dead

24.”Don’t lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.” – Grateful Dead

25.”Well it’s kind of the last great American adventure, you know what I mean? Human beings need a little danger, a little uncertainty, a little adventure in their lives and our society frowns upon that.” – Phil Lesh

26.”Now consider Garcia – all of the s**t he gets out of an electric guitar. They say that an electric guitar is a very limited instrument.” – Phil Lesh

27.”You just gotta poke around.” – Grateful Dead

28. “Did you ever waken to the sound of street cats making love?” – Grateful Dead

29. “Gone are the days we stopped to decide, where we should go, we just ride.” – Grateful Dead

30.”Life is about rhythm” – Mickey Hart

31.”The trouble with you is the trouble with me, got two good eyes, but you still don’t see.” – Grateful Dead

32.”When it seems like the night will last forever, and there’s nothing left to do but count the years. When the strings of my harp sever, and stones fall from my eyes instead of tears, I will walk alone by the black muddy river.” – Grateful Dead

33.”Let there be songs to fill the air” – Grateful Dead

34. “There’s nothing like music to relieve the soul and uplift it.” – Mickey Hart

35.”It wasn’t serious in the sense of deadpan. In a sense it was both high farce, just like the Acid Tests, and it was music that actually changed people’s personalities. It was warping. There we were all together. Somehow the music would make us act in unison, but it was only one of the factors in that impulse. True, it was the loudest individual factor (aside from LSD). But only because you’ve really got to have something to relate to, especially when reality is hitting you right in the guts.” – Phil Lesh

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36.”Since it costs a lot to win and even more to lose, you and me are bound to spend some time wondering what to choose.” – Grateful Dead

37.”I’d rather be a free man in my grave, than living as a puppet or a slave.” – Grateful Dead

38.”Ain’t no time to hate, barely time to wait.” – Grateful Dead

39.”Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining.” – Grateful Dead

40.”Keep your day job, ’til your night job pays.” – Grateful Dead

41.”I thought the ’60s was the most exciting time and the most vital music, and we were really together as one mind then.” – Micket Hart

42.”Lord made a lady out of Adam’s rib, next thing you know you got women’s lib.” – Grateful Dead

43.”Well I ain’t often right, but I’ve never been wrong.” – Grateful Dead

44.”Put your money where your love is.” – Grateful Dead

45. “There’s nothing like music to relieve the soul and uplift it.” -Mickey Hart

46.”Living on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine.” – Grateful Dead

47.”If you got a warrent, I guess you’re gonna come in.” – Grateful Dead

48.”Love is like an April rain that makes the harvest grow.” – Grateful Dead

49.”We didn’t invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead. We were just in line to see what was going to happen.” – Jerry Garcia

50.”Rat cat ally, roll them bones, need that cash to feed the jones. And the politicians throwing stones, singing ashes, ashes, all fall down.” – Grateful Dead

51. “Going down that road feeling bad” – The Grateful Dead

52.”We were very fortunate to have a little time in history when LSD was still legal and we were able to experiment with drugs just like we were doing with music.” – Jerry Garcia

53.”I may be going to hell in a bucket, baby, but at least I’m enjoying the ride.” – Grateful Dead

54.”The shoe is on the hand that fits.”- Grateful Dead

55.”Drink all day and rock all night, the law come and get you if you don’t walk right.” – Grateful Dead

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56 “When God way up in heaven, for whatever it was worth, thought he’d have a big old party, thought he’d call it planet Earth.” – Grateful Dead

57. “People will always try to find themselves and their place in the world.” – Mickey Hart

58.”Never trust a woman who wears her pants too tight, she might love you tomorrow, but she’ll be gone tomorrow night.” – Grateful Dead

59.”Don’t dominate the rap, Jack, if you got nothing new to say.” – Grateful Dead

60.”The preacherman calls me sinner, but his little girl calls me saint. “- Grateful Dead

See also: Jim Morrison’s Best Quotes

Grateful Dead Video

If you love the dead, you will love this appearance on David Letterman! It’s from 1982 and it’s classic.  This is a 15 minute appearance by Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir on the David Letterman Show.

They appeared during the Grateful Dead’s Spring Tour, on a night-off between shows at Nassau and Glens Falls, NY. The introduction is funny with Letterman teaching Jerry how to play “Proud Marry” on acoustic guitar. Jerry and Bob perform two acoustic songs – “Deep Elem Blues and then after the break they perform the “Monkey & The Engineer.”

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Use these Grateful Dead Quotes to savor your week ahead

Regardless of whether you followed The Grateful Dead in the 1960s or found them years after you can’t remember Woodstock, their music and words speak to the soul long after the band’s break up. The members of the band may perish but their music will live to be eternal and take its place in the rock and roll songbook and in a book of musical quotes worthy of living by. The music and the quotes left to us by The Grateful Dead and its members are worthy of reading and will keep us singing along for decades to come. We hope you find inspiration in these eternal quotes.


Related: Jimi Hendrix’s Quotes

Image Credits: Artist: Hypnotic Studios Infinite via Wikimedia Commons

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