Zack de la Rocha Quotes

You can't build a lasting political movement based on hostility to government.

Every nation prepares, through its government, to equip itself with the power to hurl death upon its fellow-nations. No people seeks that power; it is governments that seek it.

A revolution that cannot defend itself in an age of sedition, against various political and military coup attempts and other such acts, is not alive. This revolution is alive for it defends itself and indeed prevails and wins.

We have to begin having the State Department in on joint plans so that our foreign policy and military plans would be in step …. I will not go along with the past practice of not informing the State Department as to Army and Navy joint plans ...

Over the next decade, the market-driven explosion of surveillance sensors and data analytics will bring an unprecedented level of transparency to global affairs. Commercial satellites will capture daily images of the entire globe, offering inexpensive and automated reports on everything from crop yields to military activity. Journalists, NGOs, and bloggers will increasingly use crowdsourced data to uncover wartime atrocities and expose government hypocrisy. Private security companies will discover the sources of cyberattacks and data theft. Biometric systems will expose the identities of clandestine operatives, and government agencies will struggle to contain leakers and whistleblowers.

The extremism of the Trump administration has galvanized women to push back against the political system that has disadvantaged them for a generation.

While most become star struck by A-list actors, you'll only see me in awe of leaders effecting change. Politician and diplomat Madeleine Albright, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. These are my heroes. These are my celebrities.

I was fascinated, long before I joined the SNP, in the world around me; current affairs really interested me.

I am so proud of Pakistanis and specifically of our lawyers for speaking out and getting their heads bashed in for a better Pakistan.

Certainly there are many Congress members who have been arrested in the past on immigration issues and will continue to because we all understand that staying silent is not an option.

I think that many of the issues they were facing in South Africa were the same as those I was singing about. Conscription, resisting the draft, government repression - I mentioned all those things in my songs.

My mother informed me that the way to be a change agent to create change, the first line of defense, or however you want to phrase that, is politics and government.

I was a political science major. I was always interested in social impact.

Unless the immigration issue is tackled in a constructive way, Mexico and the United States will probably revert to a historic cycle of confrontation and recrimination.

Personally, I am uneasy about the notion of "a politically engaged university," for reasons I wrote about over 30 years ago, at the height of protest and resistance (reprinted in For Reasons of State).

I refused this evening at Oxford University to debate with an Israeli, a supporter of the apartheid state of Israel. The reason is simple: no recognition, no normalisation. Just boycott, divestment and sanctions, until the apartheid state is defeated. I never debate with Israelis nor speak to their media. If they want to speak about Palestine – the address is the PLO.

The biggest enemy of an artist is apathy... A kid gets killed by the police and I buy a T-shirt and before I can wear that one, there's another kid (killed) and I'm running out of closet space.

And you can really see in all of these issues that are priorities for Eleanor Roosevelt, where the compromises are painful, the compromises are hard, and the difficulties between them really begin to loom very large by 1936, by 1938.

What kind of expression is this - "punishing Israel"? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don't behave properly, are slapped across the fingers? Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with "punishments." He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments. You have no right to "punish" Israel - and I protest at the very use of this term.

Donald Trump is saying we're going to end the lawlessness at the border and we're going to push Mexico to do better. So there's been a reaction by the activist community to attack him.

I was involved with the anti-apartheid movement through my work as an artist and also through my political commitment.

Like art, political action gives shape and expression to the things we fear as well as to those we desire. It is a creative process, drawing on the power to imagine as well as to act.

I think, Russia is pushing against the West in general, not just the United States but the institutions of the West, the key governments in the West using a variety of tools, as well as military assault on Ukraine.

I think the people marching in L.A., on college campuses around the country, aren't marching simply because Trump was a Republican president and he got elected. They're marching because the Trump campaign is very much centered on demagogic rhetoric against immigrants, against Muslim-Americans, against black protest, against sort of America's non-white community.

Each generation has to stand up for democracy. It can't take anything for granted and may have to fight fundamental battles anew.