In my recent book MUSIC IS POWER: Popular Songs, Social Justice and the Will to Change, I quote Gil Scott-Heron, who wrote "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" on the nature of revolutionary change:

“Revolution’ sounds like something that happens, like turning on a light switch. But it’s moving a large object. And a lot of folks’ efforts to push it in one direction or the other have to combine. And the people who are there when it finally moves visibly—when people finally realize that it’s over here and it was over there—those are the people that get the credit for it. But I think everybody who moved it a little bit further were folks that understood that you try and change things, not necessarily for yourself, but for your children and their children. Because you want things to be better, by and by.”