Phil Ochs Quotes

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

Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.

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

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

Music really matters in politics.

There's still injustice happening in my world. I sing my songs at concerts and I'm so grateful that the people are ready to hear them.

I think art can really serve to inspire a movement - and, of course, it has in the past. The Civil Rights movement wouldn't have the same resonance without the songs from everyone from Pete Seeger to Odetta to James Brown.

This music is about struggle. Reggae is a vehicle to carry a message of freedom and peace.

Long live protest songs, in whatever form they take.

Like anything important, anything you need people to hear - you've got to have music for it. You've got to make it at least a little piece of a song or sometimes a whole song.

You can say things a million times, but if you can't sing it, then it really isn't much of a song.

To me, presentations are the most powerful device. You can't really name a movement that didn't start with the spoken word.

I mean, there's a hell of a lot of grounds for protest, but you don't do it through music.

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

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

We don't have to stand on a soap-box and preach because hopefully we're channelling it through the new record.

I love the power of celebrity because you can give voice to the voiceless.

I learned more complex ways to manipulate the manipulators, to bring attention to issues about which I felt passionate.

In all honesty, I don't know what one song can change.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts it has its laws

Music should never be harmless.

My social and political interests are part of my career. I cannot separate them. My songs reflect the human condition. The role of art isn't just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.

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

Anything that is worth struggling for is worth singing for.

Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counter-power, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.