Billy Bragg Quotes

Revolution is not a one time event.

The most exciting things going on in America today are movements to change America.

One thing that I'd just remind young people of is that when John Lewis, who's a member of Congress today, defied George Wallace and led the march from Selma to Montgomery, he was 23 years old. Martin Luther King was the old man in the bunch, and he was 35, so young people need to know that they've always been an important part of our society, have always been at the forefront of pushing for a more just America, and we can't be successful without the impatience, the vigor that young people bring to the fight for social justice.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

I'm part of an important movement that needs to happen.

My activism and sexual revolution in New York was a factor.

If you compromise in any kind of movement or any kind of wave of revolution, if you sort of play the game, things are gonna change far more slowly than you need them to.

Social change comes through people.

When you look at the times in history when change was brought about, there were two factors: crisis and leadership.

Sometimes things need to get really bad before they can ever get better. Really bad can become untenable if enough people get sick of it. That was a big thing about why I ended up taking part in that rally [against police brutality] and ended up voicing my opinion and declaring what side I was standing on.

I would say when I went to Michigan. It started. I got very very involved in civil rights in Ann Harbor right away. Picketing, something I never even knew existed.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.

There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.

Pick a movement, pick a revolution and join it.

Resistance is the first step to change.

You're either an activist or an inactivist. I want to stop this.

One does not necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation: it can be created.

I think direct political action, civil disobedience, in particular, is something to be taken very seriously.

In less than a century we experienced great movement. The youth movement! The labor movement! The civil rights movement! The peace movement! The solidarity movement! The women's movement! The disability movement! The disarmament movement! The gay rights movement! The environmental movement! Movement! Transformation! Is there any reason to believe we are done?

We have the right of revolution. Revolution does not always have to be weapons and warfare; it's also about revolutionary ideas.

What matters is not to know the world but to change it.

We can all become activists and raise questions.

We accept the world in order to change it. If you do not accept, then what are you going to change?

I definitely believe that art is the best way to produce social change.