Latest Tom Morello Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Every story has a point of view and whether it's by what one chooses to include or exclude from a story or whether it's a very specific agenda that is pushed, there is no such thing as objective media. Once you realize that it's more than just a marketplace of ideas, it's a battleground of ideas that are suppressed and the ideas that are pushed forward in the mainstream media are the ones that independent media has a chance to address. I think that the democratization of media in that way can be very helpful in allowing the truth to come out in a way that it might not on CNN or FOX.

  Tom Morello

  Independent, Thinking, Chance

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I don't believe that the Democratic party has anything to do with the Left. We have two political parties in the US: a right wing party and a right centrist party. That's the Democrats. I laugh when people describe Barack Obama as a socialist president. As a socialist musician, I'll tell you when we have a socialist president. We don't have one now, not even close.

  Tom Morello

  Party, Believe, Laughing

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• Poverty is not an accident of, sort of, an economic spreadsheet. Poverty is a crime. There are criminals involved. And those criminals walk the streets as free men. What my music is about, and what - this from the riots in the streets of Greece and Spain to the people's uprisings in Egypt and Libya and Madison is about is holding those people accountable, those who are responsible for subverting the entire global economy and causing so much misery and then laughing about it with their, you know, clinking their champagne glasses on their yachts.

  Tom Morello

  Men, Laughing, People

  "Tom Morello Leads The Occupy 'Guitarmy'". Interview with Diane Sweet, crooksandliars.com. May 22, 2012.

• My take is that there's two ways to approach history. You sit in your armchair and you watch it on the news and you return to your PlayStation. Or you get out in the streets and you make it. Like, when those Supreme Court justices, you know, legalize desegregation, it wasn't due to their infinite wisdom. It's because people whose names you do not read about in history books, people whose faces you will never see, were the ones who struggled and sacrificed, sometimes gave their lives, to make this country a more equal one. When, it's like those people don't make history, it's us.

  Tom Morello

  Country, Book, People

  "Tom Morello Leads The Occupy 'Guitarmy'". Interview with Diane Sweet, crooksandliars.com. May 22, 2012.

• I think I was meant to be a musician who speaks his mind about social justice issues. And I grew up in a lower middle class family, but a family that had enough money to buy a $50 guitar and a $50 amplifier, and had a basement to rehearse in. What I think the global human cost of this horrific poverty is how many Mozarts or curers of cancer are slaving away in the Maquiladoras along the Tijuana border, or in the Indonesian sweat shops? There are billions of people who will never become the people they could be, or the people they were meant to be, due to crushing poverty.

  Tom Morello

  Crush, Cancer, Thinking

  "Tom Morello Leads The Occupy 'Guitarmy'". Interview with Diane Sweet, crooksandliars.com. May 22, 2012.

• In America, we have freedom of choice. But some are free to choose between Lamborghini and Rolls Royce while others are free to choose which dumpster they're going to have their meal out of next. Some are free to choose which, you know, homes and farms to foreclosed on, while others choose which bridge they're going to sleep under tonight.

  Tom Morello

  Sleep, Home, Choices

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I didn't abandon my studies. Because I was, through no - clarify this. Through no particular genius of my own, I was the first person from Libertyville Public High School to attend Harvard, not because I was smarter than anyone or better than anyone, but no one had ever applied before. It was like University of Illinois, a fine institution, was the sort of the upper echelon of places where kids went from that school. And so I felt sort of a duty to myself and my peers to continue with those studies, and to continue to, intellectually arm myself for my coming struggles.

  Tom Morello

  Struggle, School, Kids

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• When I am most successful as a guitar player is when I'm able to just sort of lose myself. You stop thinking about technique or anything like that and just trying to evoke the emotion of that song brings, which is a very strong emotion for me.

  Tom Morello

  Song, Strong, Successful

  "Tom Morello Leads The Occupy 'Guitarmy'". Interview with Diane Sweet, crooksandliars.com. May 22, 2012.

• I didn't choose to be a guitar player. That was something that felt like it was chosen for me. And with that blessing and curse, I, throughout my entire career, it's been my job to weave my convictions into my vocation. And whether I'm standing in the streets of Chicago or the Occupy Wall Street or in Madison, Wisconsin, my job is to steel the backbone of people on the frontlines of social justice struggles, and to put wind in sails of those struggles. And people who are fighting on a, on a daily basis, at a grass roots level, for the things that I believe in.

  Tom Morello

  Wall, Believe, Struggle

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• There's a unique component of music that is different from, the written pamphlet or a speech. There's something, when you get the right combination of rhythm, melody and the right lyrical couplet, that feels like truth in the reptilian brain. There's something hardwired in our D.N.A.. And when you get a large group of people singing together in solidarity, it's something that, in my experience, and I've played countless demonstrations and protests through the years, it's something that can really help a struggle.

  Tom Morello

  Struggle, Unique, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• My job is to steel the backbone of people on the frontlines of social justice struggles, and to put wind in sails of those struggles. And people who are fighting on a, on a daily basis, at a grass roots level.

  Tom Morello

  Struggle, Fighting, Justice

  "Tom Morello Leads The Occupy 'Guitarmy'". Interview with Diane Sweet, crooksandliars.com. May 22, 2012.

• If Trump is going to govern in a fascist way, then we need to make America ungovernable.

  Tom Morello

  America, Needs, Way

  Source: www.billboard.com

• We have power not just with our voices, but we have economic power in what we do for a living, too.

  Tom Morello

  Voice, Economic, Economic Power

  Source: www.billboard.com

• Unity and resistance is a strong American trait.

  Tom Morello

  Strong, Unity, Resistance

  Source: www.billboard.com

• There's not a country on earth that doesn't feel that it might be invaded by Donald Trump's regime.

  Tom Morello

  Country, Earth, Might

  Source: www.billboard.com

• Bad presidents make for great music, and I'm gonna do my best to provide it.

  Tom Morello

  President, Great Music

• The reason why many young people in the Vietnam War era were active was their lives were threatened by the draft and they were going to perhaps be forced to go overseas and fight in an immoral war.

  Tom Morello

  War, Fighting, People

  Source: www.billboard.com

• Trump's ignorance in environmental science is a threat to the entire planet.

  Tom Morello

  Ignorance, Environmental, Trump

  Source: www.billboard.com

• This unprecedented racism, bigotry and proto-fascist agenda that Donald Trump is trying to shove down America's throat has unleashed the resistance that will dethrone him.

  Tom Morello

  America, Racism, Trying

  Source: www.billboard.com

• There are many fans of hard rock music that have been wrongly pigeonholed as apathetic. This music is not music for the elitist coffeehouse culture in SoHo. It' s rock 'n' roll music for kids across the land, and I think that makes it much more subversive in a way, in that it has the form and the function of a powerful, populist music, but it can carry very incendiary messages.

  Tom Morello

  Powerful, Kids, Thinking

• 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, Done, Poverty

  Interview with Robin Grearson, logger.believermag.com. August 27, 2013.

• 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, Progressive Society

  Interview with Robin Grearson, logger.believermag.com. August 27, 2013.

• 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

  Years, Hunger And Poverty, Numbers

• 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, Criminals

  Interview with Robin Grearson, logger.believermag.com. August 27, 2013.

• 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

  Interview with Robin Grearson, logger.believermag.com. August 27, 2013.