Protest Song Quotes

Southern change gonna come at last! Now your crosses are burning fast, Southern Man.

We can't forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us.

I'm definitely not going to go and sing a song that condones certain things.

In the '60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn't just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at the time.

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

There's a lot of injustice in the world and it's what I sing about in my music and what I try to confront in my life as an activist.

My theme song is 'One Tin Soldier' by Coven.

I wear the black for those who never read.

The song 'If I Had a Hammer' is geared toward people who don't have a hammer. Maybe before I had a hammer I thought I'd hammer in the morning and hammer in the evening. But once you get a hammer, you find you don't really hammer as much as you thought you would.

Legislation won't necessarily start a riot. But the right song can make someone pick up a chair.

Remember the Bob Dylan rule: it's not just a record, it's a movement.

I don't know if music has ever achieved anything past appealing to the people that it appeals to. If a song could stop a war, then Bob Marley and Bob Dylan songs would have stopped one or two.

'Revolution' . There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio.

When Curtis Mayfield made 'Super Fly,' he used the lyric to make a statement.

What is the point in going into a stand and singing a song that you know is racist and then going out into the street and saying to me, 'I'm not racist. Come to Tottenham.'

Such times of crisis have inevitably brought 'music of conscience' to the fore and I expect we will be hearing more and more of it in the immediate future. When people feel empowered to come together and raise their voices, also will mean raising their voices in song as well.

Did you ever hear about the rock and roll singer who got 3 or 4 Cadillacs, saying power to the people, dance to the music, wants you to pat him on the back.

I'm proud to say I was part of a movement in which we sang 'All You Need Is Love' at political rallies.

Excuse me while I kiss the sky.

Hell no / I ain't going to go / Clean out my cell / And take my tail / To jail / Without bail / Because it's better there eating / Watching television fed / Than in Vietnam with your white folks dead.

Social justice has always been a part of my inspiration. For example, when the Vietnam War was going on, I wrote a song about that.

Now everybody has been doing the national anthem in their own style, but in 1968 I was the one that took the heat. It cut my career for quite a while.

You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran? Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.

In the '60s and '70s, a protest song was a genre in music.