[The demonstrations were] merely an attack of mental disobedience
on an obediently insane society...and if you feel you have been living
in an unreal world for the last couple of years, it is particularly
because this power structure has refused to listen to reason...Step
outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own
rules and your own reality.
(from _An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Period_ by
Charles DeBenedetti (Syracuse Univ. Press, 1990).
America is two Mack trucks colliding on a superhighway because all
the drivers are on amphetamines.
It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the
act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect
to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt.
That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life.
God isn't dead--he's just missing in action.
From the liner notes of The Broadside Tapes:
When they show the destruction of society on color TV, I want to be
able to look out over Los Angeles and make sure they get it right.
Leaving America is like losing twenty pounds and finding a new
girlfriend.
A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it
for bullshit
And if there's any home for America, it lies in a rebolution, and if
there's any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis
Presley to become Che Guevara.
The final story, the final chapter of western man, I believe, lies
in Los Angeles.
From Phil's intro to The World Began In Eden And Ended in Los Angeles on
There and Now - Live in Vancouver 1968
I was over there, entertaining the troops. I won't say which
troops.
From Phil's intro to The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo
Domingo on Phil Ochs in Concert and There But For Fortune
Before the days of television and mass media, the folksinger was
often a traveling newspaper spreading tales through music. There is
an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their
actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror
available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.
From Broadside
"Leave the old and dying America and use your creative energies to
help form a new America, which would be de-militarized, more
humanistic, where the police are less hostile and closer to the
community, where the wealthy are not given unleashed power for the
exploitation of the people. "And, mostly because it's now a matter of
life and death, reassert an ecological balance with the environment,
which means the people in the oil companies and the car companies
and the space industry and all the other industries will have to be
brought into account, so that there will be a new definition of
government which has to be closer to the people and less close to
special interests which are far more harmful than any revolutionaries."
From an interview with Michael Ross, 1969
"I can spare a dime, brother, but in these morally inflationary
times, a dime goes a lot farther if it's demanding work rather than
adding to the indignity of relief."
From the liner notes of "I Ain't Marching Anymore":
A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a
song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. -- Joe Hill
Document URL:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/ochs-quotes.html
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modified: Thursday, 31-May-2007 09:42:04 EDT