Tom Morello > Quotes

“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

“A musician's or artist's responsibility is a simple one, and that is, through your music to tell the truth,”
― Tom Morello

“I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal-but there's an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave-owningfounding fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800's and early 1900's-that's amazing. People of get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that that's so much more courageous and brave.”
― Tom Morello

“We offer a stark contrast to the bland escapism that chokes the charts,”
― Tom Morello

“Let's talk now about practice and process. You practice technique to get your fingers where you want them to go. You practice theory to understand where they can go and why.

You play live and write songs. You practice that to bring the theory and the technique and create art with it. And you seek inspiration to make that art something that's meaningful to you and you can communicate to others.”
― Tom Morello

“Practice has played a huge role in my life as a musician. I had literally zero natural ability on the guitar. I had to fight for ever single inch of my guitar playing. Later on, there were breakthroughs where creativity came easy, where I was able to move my fingers around the fretboard. But I promise you, and hear these words — I had zero natural ability. It was only through hours, and hours, and hours of practice that I was able to amass some sort of ability on the guitar.”
― Tom Morello