Tom Morello Quotes

The corporate-powered parties are not gonna do it for us, not the greater or the lesser evil. We have to do it for ourselves. And the minute we stand up and stand together, we are unstoppable.

If there is going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens.

Change never comes from the White House. It comes from your house and my house.

Ordinary people can bring about change.

The revolution cannot be funded. It's not the imagination of trusts and foundations that's going to bring real change.

The little grassroots people can change this world.

Real change never occurs from the top on down, [but] always from the bottom on up.

Where there is a sufficient social movement of self-reliant communities, there can be political change. There must be political change.

Change happens from the bottom up - all of us as individuals deciding that we will and we do have an impact.

Occupy is anything but a protest movement. That's why it has been so hard for news agencies to express or even discern the 'demands' of the growing legions of Occupy participants around the nation, and even the world.

It's always the small people who change things. It's never the politicians or the big guys. I mean, who pulled down the Berlin wall? It was all the people in the streets. The specialists didn't have a clue the day before.

Social change comes through people.

People say that the government should be doing this Yeah, but the government is not doing this. So we do.

The center of gravity has shifted from the courts to community action.

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.

Our Revolution has been the keeper of the flame doing the vital work of building a grassroots movement that leverages the people's agenda.

I am one who believes in the power of the people. I am inspired when I see people hit the streets, who challenge their elected officials, and are willing to stand up and fight. I encourage it.

When ordinary people come together, they can upset the mighty.

change starts at the bottom. I think we're disempowered by the idea that it starts at the top, when really change is like a tree. It does start at the bottom.

We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.

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.

The task is to transform society; only the people can do that - not heroes, not celebrities, not stars.

All change starts with a distant rumble at the grassroots level.

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

You keep plugging away--that's the way social change takes place. That's the way every social change in history has taken place: by a lot of people, who nobody ever heard of, doing work.