Tom Morello famous quotes

Paul Ryan's love for Rage Against The Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades
-- Tom Morello

#Two #Machines #Embodiment

In our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write.
-- Tom Morello

#Country #Song #Struggle

Music, I think, is best when it honestly explores personal demons, and it stirs around in the silt of the psyche to find out what's really there.
-- Tom Morello

#Thinking #Demon #Personal Demons

My music is made for the people who are willing to stand up to change this world themselves.
-- Tom Morello

#People #World #Made

Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn’t understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn’t understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.
-- Tom Morello

#Clueless #Machines #Band

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.
-- Tom Morello

#Trying #World #Injustice

A musicians or artists responsibility is a simple one, and that is, through your music to tell the truth.
-- Tom Morello

#Responsibility #Simple #Artist

I have another name for what they're terming whistleblowers, and that's righteous heroes. From Bradley Manning to Snowden. They're people of conscience who are unwilling to turn a blind eye to the crimes of our government. And thank goodness for them.
-- Tom Morello

#Hero #Eye #Government

If aliens came down and challenged us to a Battle of the Bands to decide the fate of Planet Earth, I would feel very confident putting early Van Halen forward as our champion.
-- Tom Morello

#Fate #Champion #Battle

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.
-- Tom Morello

#Thinking #Artist #Challenges

America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.
-- Tom Morello

#Jobs #Exercise #Land

Whenever I set out in a new direction, whether it's with a new band or being a frontman or writing a comic book or entering into movie scoring or anything like that, I wouldn't say that I do it fearlessly.
-- Tom Morello

#Book #Writing #Band

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.
-- Tom Morello

#Media #America #Way

I feel fortunate to have made records during an era where people actually bought music. But I have friends in struggling up-and-coming bands that will certainly never be able to pay the rent, because music has been devalued.
-- Tom Morello

#Struggle #People #Band

I was a fan of heavy music - first metal, then punk, then hip hop.
-- Tom Morello

#Hip Hop #Firsts #Hips

I find it ironic that now water is more expensive than music. On the one hand, record companies can't go crying when they've gouged consumers for decades, charging exorbitant prices for CDs that cost 29 cents to make. On the other hand, when music is free, musicians starve.
-- Tom Morello

#Hands #Cds #Water

The real estate agent had to go door-to-door in the apartment building we wanted to rent, asking if it was OK for this interracial family - my mom is white and I was a 1-year-old half-African kid - to live in the apartment building.
-- Tom Morello

#Mom #Real #Kids

When real substantive change happens it's the people who watch your show, they're the ones that make it happen. It's people whose names are not highlighted in history books. They're the ones that stand up in their place and time to make change.
-- Tom Morello

#Real #Book #Names

When you wanna rock hard, children, lean on F#.
-- Tom Morello

#Children #Rocks

I myself am a very, very peaceful person. Throughout our history, from our own American revolution to the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, to labor strikes in the US, people have resorted to violence to achieve a more progressive society, from time to time.
-- Tom Morello

#People #Peaceful #Resistance

I think it's crucially important to be present in the lives of your children. They are my most important cause that I fight for. But I also feel an added responsibility that I want to leave them a better world than this one that we have now.
-- Tom Morello

#Children #Responsibility #Fighting

I don't want to leave this mess around my children to clean up. I want to swing absolutely as hard as I can to straighten things out before they get to the age where it starts hurting them.
-- Tom Morello

#Hurt #Children #Swings

Bashing the elite is what I'm all about in my music because they absolutely don't deserve the privileged position that they're in, and we're seeing this around the globe right now.
-- Tom Morello

#Music Is #Globes #Position

I'd say that one area where my political views have remained unchanged is that, I am opposed to the government spying on everybody.
-- Tom Morello

#Views #Government #Political

If you want to change the world right now, it's not so much a secret how you do it. You put the secrets of a criminal government on the Internet.
-- Tom Morello

#Government #Secret #World

There are literally billions of people on the planet who live in an unimaginable poverty that's not in any way different from the plight of the people in Orchid. And you can't have the splendor of Rodeo Drive without the sweatshops of Indonesia; those two things go hand in hand.
-- Tom Morello

#Hands #Orchids #Two

What is poverty, if not violence. Like, the number of people who die every year from starvation and from hunger and poverty is in the tens of millions.
-- Tom Morello

#Numbers #Years #People

Poverty is curable, but it's just not done, because it's not profitable. And that is the kind of violence that's perpetuated on humanity.
-- Tom Morello

#Humanity #Poverty #Violence

I think you might be considered a terrorist for asking the question! It can be so broadly defined now. And the thing is, you're not privy to those decisions. Anyone who expresses any opinion can be considered a terrorist.
-- Tom Morello

#Thinking #Decision #Might

What draws people to the instrument is the love for guitar players that play a certain way. I mean, even though it wasn't intentional, it was hard to avoid copying Eddie Van Halen. He was basically the *bleep* back then.
-- Tom Morello

#Mean #Player #Guitar

Always question the authority.
-- Tom Morello

#Authority

The skin you're in makes choices for you.
-- Tom Morello

#Choices #Skins

Sacrifice and neon lights slave ships don't wait. Love many, trust few, and don't be late
-- Tom Morello

#Sacrifice #Light #Waiting

I didn't grow up with my Kenyan family. I grew up in a small, conservative suburb of Chicago.
-- Tom Morello

#Growing Up #Chicago #Conservative

The most powerful music is music with purpose.
-- Tom Morello

#Powerful #Purpose #Most Powerful

Being a musician is a given for me-I didn't have much choice in the matter.
-- Tom Morello

#Choices #Matter #Musician

In a world of bands called Limp Bizkit and Hoobastank, Electric Sheep rolls off the tongue like a Shakespearean love sonnet. Leave me alone.
-- Tom Morello

#Sheep #Leave Me Alone #Band

Music and the arts feed our souls, but a decent wage puts food on the table. Musicians, fans of music, and grassroots political organizations are a potent force to fight for social justice.
-- Tom Morello

#Art #Fighting #Organization

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.
-- Tom Morello

#Years #Cash #Bob

I've always been on a personal mission to save the guitar.
-- Tom Morello

#Guitar #Missions

In my own way, I was a rebellious kid.
-- Tom Morello

#Kids #Way #Rebellious

Things like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music.
-- Tom Morello

#Car #Resistance #Rebellion

A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs.
-- Tom Morello

#Girl #Song #Writing

Of course, music is an art form, and it's not all that competitive. But we don't ever intend to be the second-best band on a stage at any show.
-- Tom Morello

#Art #Band #Second Best

I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders.
-- Tom Morello

#Color #Illinois #Firsts

I came late to the genre of folk music.
-- Tom Morello

#Genre #Folks #Folk Music

For the millennium [New Year's Eve], you really have a choice to make. You either have to be naked with your head on fire and a shotgun in Bali or else you have to spend time with friends or family around the fireplace. And I'm choosing option B
-- Tom Morello

#New Year #Years #Fire

Tonight, it's the rock and roll all night and party every day hall of fame
-- Tom Morello

#Party #Night #Rock And Roll

My parents met in Kenya. My father is African, is Kenyan. The Kenyan side of my family was involved in the anti-colonial movement.
-- Tom Morello

#Father #Parent #Movement

Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.
-- Tom Morello

#Vision #Care #Want

You can kiss my Kiss-loving ***** because Kiss was never a critic's band. It was a people's band.
-- Tom Morello

#Kissing #People #Band

Amazingly talented singer who sang like an angry angel
-- Tom Morello

#Angel #Singers #Angry