Bonnie Raitt Quotes

Music is a powerful tool in galvanizing people around an issue. There's no better way to get your point across than to put it in a beautiful song.

And I don't expect anyone can bring about a revolution in the way that Bob Dylan did - and really didn't - in the 1960s.

I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.

I first bought a Buffy Sainte-Marie record when I was 12, and her music has always remained with me. In the 1960s, as a political activist, Buffy's lyrics were fearless, and I'm very grateful for all the risks that she took.

Be an active participant in your community and country. Every small gesture makes up the big gestures. Resist, rinse, repeat.

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

Maybe subconsciously I've kept activism separate from acting because it's important to me in a more profound way.

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.

It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it's not going to solve the problems.

As a young man, causes of one kind or another engaged me, and I thought the media is where you express yourself in that. I lived with the illusion, for quite a long time, that if you described something accurately, something would be done about it.

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

I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.

Our future cannot depend on the government alone. The ultimate solutions lie in the attitudes and the actions of the American people.

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go about it themselves - they can't depend on a particular person, i.e. me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what's going on all over the world.

I took a political stance early on, but I don't think my work is overtly political. I respond to events.

I want to use my music to deliver a political message and sometimes to denounce, but I don't want to be a politician.

It is no longer appropriate for me as an American to sit by and expect my government to get it done.

I don't consider myself specifically political, you know? I think of working as an actor as being a human thing. The concerns I have that fall into politics are human concerns.

I'm in this band to give volume to various struggles throughout the world. To me, the tension in this band is a minimal sacrifice.

I have a very strong political outlook, and that is something I'd like to take more responsibility for in my life. I don't believe in utilising certain aspects of the power I have with celebrity to push that forward, but I would like to make some films that address some of those political issues.

In 2012, I see the potential for people to come together, huge moments of political and social engagement where elections are part of the strategy for change, but not the end goal and not the only thing that matters.

A lot of people think that the music was responsible for a lot of changes in the Sixties, but I think the music came out of it. The music wouldn't have happened without the social changes.

Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.