Darryl Pinckney Quotes

Artists are not going to put somebody new in the president's chair. It's all worth the effort; it all needs to be done. But I don't look at songwriting as having the ability to necessarily do that today.

Just by making a decision to stay out of politics, you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it, if you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.

I'm not sure I am a politician. I would say that I am still an artist, and I'm trying to use politics as an instrument for change.

The monied interests are doing what they do best - making money. The rest of us need to do what we can do best - use our voices, our vigor, and our votes.

We're seeing young people find their own voices and find their activism.

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

I think I can regard myself as a political decision-maker.

Politics is an instrument that can transform society.

My parents always went to rallies and demonstrated against certain things; my generation, we often have a political conscience, but we're not that involved.

Washington is a bubble, and there is nothing more powerful than the conservative grassroots when we are engaged and letting our voice be heard.

I think you have to ask yourself does voting work on the level that you are trying to effectuate change; that is the conversation you must have.

If you look not just at the Arab Spring, but at what I call the 'Youth Spring' that has started in Europe, young people are starting to find a voice, and they are not looking to the traditional media to reflect that.

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go about it themselves - they can't depend on a particular person, i.e. me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what's going on all over the world.

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

Children have in the past and continue to influence policy makers.

There's something so healthy about young people speaking up in unity.

Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation.

Young people have so much more power than they tend to think to be able to affect politics. And if people will organize and get involved and go out and knock on doors and hand out leaflets and make a change, then they can determine the future.

Trumpeting the importance of voting deludes people into thinking that they have a leash on the government.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

When I turned 18, was the first time that I really started concentrating on politics. And I started doing so because I realized that in order to really create and generate change, it has to come from changing laws... so I started campaigning for Norman Lear's foundation, which was Declare Yourself.

The ballot is stronger than bullets.

Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.

I have a very strong political outlook, and that is something I'd like to take more responsibility for in my life. I don't believe in utilising certain aspects of the power I have with celebrity to push that forward, but I would like to make some films that address some of those political issues.

It's time for women to wake up, to use the power of the vote, to honor the suffragists who chained themselves to the White House fence so that women could vote.