Steven Patrick Morrissey Quotes

I think we have responsibilities to be active in the things we believe in, regardless of what our job is. At least in my lifetime, there has been a tremendous combining of activism and music, that came up in the era of Pete Seeger and the Weavers and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Peter Paul & Mary.

The protest songs of the 1960s and 70s managed to blend political and societal views with music from the heart.

Back then I was still listening to rhythm and blues, and my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger concert. And it gelled. He made all the sense in the world to me. I got addicted to his albums, and then Belafonte and Odetta - they were the people who seemed to fuse things that were important to me into music. I think Pete the most because he did what he did to the point where he took those enormous risks and then paid for them.

I can't exactly say why there's not much protest music to speak off. And I know there are acts out there still putting a message in their music.

My dad was a huge Bob Dylan fan, so we listened to his music, Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, and all that kind of stuff.

Early in my career, people wanted to hear music about protest, about trying to change things.

The '60s was one of the first times the power of music was used by a generation to bind them together.

I try to use my music to move these people to act.

I used protest music as a vehicle.

To me, protesting and playing music go hand in hand.

In our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write.

Wish I'd written Tikkun Olam – a Weavers or Peter Paul & Mary hit!

Long live protest songs, in whatever form they take.

A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit.

One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies.

I've played hundreds of protests. I've marched on dozens of picket lines. I've strummed my guitar at innumerable demonstrations.

If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is dripping with rage.

As a political weapon, it has helped me for 30 years defend the rights of American blacks and third-world people all over the world, to defend them with protest songs. To move the audience to make them conscious of what has been done to my people around the world.

I love how music and chants were used in the Civil Rights movement to help people keep marching. How songs were both a balm and a call to action.

Dylan captured what was on a million minds and turned it into poetry. With 'Blowin' in the Wind' or 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' he set a whole new standard.

I collaborated with so many people from Chicago - so many Black people, young Black women organizations like BYP100 and Assata's Daughters. Just being out there, I saw what a community mobilizing can accomplish in terms of freedom and how music and my words in my music can play a significant part in that.

I just look at music as a retreat from organizing. It's like a tug-of-war with me. Music can be effective, but it's not any good if there isn't a grass-roots movement going on to support it.

Sometimes music isn't the way to talk politics, you know?

I think the '60s were a time where they were singing about what was going on around them.

I didn't grow up listening to him - my parents listened more to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell - but I lived in a flatshare for two years, and my flatmate loved Leonard Cohen. He would always play him when he got home from the studio or something.