3 November 2023, Barclays Centre, Brooklyn, New York, USA

My name is Tom Morello, and I am one quarter of Rage Against the Machine. I am deeply grateful for the musical chemistry I've had the good fortune to share with Brad Wilk, Tom Commerford, and Zach de la Rocha. Like most bands, we have differing perspectives on a lot of things, including being inducted into the Rock Hall. My perspective is that tonight is a great opportunity to celebrate the music and the mission of the band—to celebrate the fifth member of the band, which is Rage Against the Machine's incredible fans. The only reason we are here and the best way to celebrate this music is for you to carry on that mission and that message.

The lesson I learn from Rage fans is that music can change the world. Daily, I hear from fans who have been affected by our music and in turn have affected the world in significant ways. Organizers, activists, public defenders, teachers, the presidents of Chile and Finland have all spent time in our mosh pit. When protest music is done right, you can hear a new world emerging in the songs skewering the oppressors of the day and hinting that there might be more to life than what was handed to us. Can music change the world? The whole aim is to change the world or at a bare minimum, to stir up a shit load of trouble.

When Rage started, we rehearsed deep in the San Fernando Valley. This guy passed by our place regularly and one day asked, what are you guys doing in there? We said, we're a band. He asked to hear us and we said, sure. He came in, sat down. This was the first guy to ever hear the music of Rage Against the Machine. We played him a couple songs. After we finished, we asked him what he thought. He paused, stood up and said, your music makes me wanna fight.

Throughout history, the spark of rebellion has come from unexpected quarters: authors, economists, carpenters. But as Salvador Allende said, ‘There is no revolution without songs.’ So who's to say what musicians might or might not be able to achieve with revolutionary intent when the bouncing crowd makes the Richter scale shake? Personally, I'd like to thank my wife Denise, and my kids who remind me daily that the world is worth fighting for.

And thanks to all the musicians and change makers who helped shape the band's collective vision. Rage has also been fortunate to have so many talented coworkers and co-conspirators who have believed in the band: from Michael Goldstone, the guy who signed us and insisted the first radio single be an unedited song featuring 17 cuss words, to the greatest guitar tech of all time, Slim Richardson. Thank you and thanks. And deep appreciation to the hundreds of others, from those who put up flyers to those who have moved mountains to amplify the message and the music. What I hear in the music is this: that the world is not going to change itself.

But throughout history, those who have changed the world in progressive, radical or even revolutionary ways did not have any more money, power, courage, intelligence or creativity than anyone watching tonight. The world's changed by average, everyday ordinary people who have had enough and are willing to stand up for a country and a planet that is more humane, peaceful and just, and that, and that is what I'm here to celebrate tonight. Fans often ask, ‘but what can I do?’ Well, let's start with these three things. One, dream big and don't settle. Two, aim for the world you really want without compromise or apology. And three, don't wait for us.

Rage is not here, but you are. The job we set out to do is not over. Now you’re the ones that must testify. If you've got a boss, join a union. If you're a student, start an underground paper. If you're an anarchist, throw a brick, if you're a soldier or a cop, follow your conscience, not your orders. If you're bummed out, you didn't get to see Rage Against the Machine, then form your own band and let's hear what you have to say. If you're a human being, stand up for your planet before it's too late.

So tomorrow, crank up some Rage and head out and confront injustice. Wherever it rears its ugly head, it's time to change the world, brothers and sisters, or at a bare minimum to stir up a shitload of trouble. And finally, a special thanks to my mom, Mary Morello, a retired public high school teacher, a proud Rage Against the Machine fan and a lifelong radical who turned 100 years old a couple of weeks ago. She's watching at home tonight, but she asked me to tell you this: History, like music, is not something that happens. It's something you make. Thank you very much.

8 January 2017, Los Angeles, California, USA

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please sit down. Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all. You'll have to forgive me. I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year. So I have to read.

Thank you, Hollywood foreign press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said. You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places.

I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola [Davis] was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, and grew up in Central falls, Long Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in -- no, in Ireland, I do believe. And she's here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.

Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick 'em all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts. They gave me three seconds to say this. An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work.

There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life.

And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists. Because we're going to need them going forward. And they'll need us to safeguard the truth.

One more thing. Once when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor. Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight.

As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art. Thank you.