Danny Glover Quotes

The South actually has a very strong tradition of activism. The civil rights movement came from down here! It was black activists demanding that their voices be heard. People say these are red states. No they're not!

I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power throughout which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways, we still suffer from that.

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

The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.

I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.

I still paint. I love the joy that color can give to our lives and to our communities. I try to bring something of the artist in me to my politics.

In college, I got interested in news because the world was coming apart. The civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's right movement. That focused my radio ambitions toward news.

I view music as entertainment. When I'm on stage, I don't look at that as a platform for sharing ideology. Otherwise I'd be a zealot myself. That's why, when people ask me, 'Do you think you can change the world through your music?' I say, 'I doubt it.'

Electoral politics was always an objective of the Black Panther party, so Barack Obama is a part of what we dreamed and struggled and died for.

It's very hard to have lived through the Sixties and not be political.

The Twist was a guided missile launched from the ghetto into the heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.

These young people have to know that Dr. King and others made it possible for them to do their Hip Hopping.

Democratic rights develop when the ruled demand them and have the means to prevail.

I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s and find a way to get in the way. To find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble.

Abolition didn't just happen - people made it happen. Women's suffrage didn't just happen - people made it happen. Civil Rights legislation didn't just happen - people made it happen. And marriage equality didn't just happen, either - people made it happen.

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.

I think Dr. King, if he were alive today, he wouldn't disrespect the flag or the anthem; he would use his words and his voice to send a message for positive change.

I think that N.W.A. picked up where Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King would have gone if they hadn't been assassinated.

I grew up in Illinois in an environment where my parents were very politically active in the civil rights movement.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was more politically oriented. Part and parcel of the initial SNCC efforts was to not only go in for voter registration, but for political participation.

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, "There lived a great people-a black people-who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.

You are losing because blacks are getting their civil rights in the cities.

I have never seen white people who would sit, who would, who would approach a solution to their own problems nonviolently or passively. It's only when they are so-called "fighting for the rights of Negroes" that they nonviolently, passively, and lovingly, you know, approach the situation.

Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace.

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.