Quotes by Political Activists - Page 8

There is tons of work to be done, and lots of people who would like to do the work. It's just that the economic system is such a grotesque catastrophe that it can't even put together idle hands and needed work, which would be satisfying to the people and which would be beneficial to all of us. That's just the mark of a failed system. The most dramatic mark of it.
Noam Chomsky
All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?
Banksy
Respect the man of noble races other than your own, who carries out, in a different place, a combat parallel to yours -- to ours. He is your ally. He is our ally, be he at the other end of the world.Love all living things whose humble task is not opposed in any way to yours, to ours: men with simple hearts, honest, without vanity and malice, and all the animals, because they are beautiful, without exception and without exception indifferent to whatever "idea" there may be. Love them, and you will see the eternal in the glance of their eyes of jet, amber, or emerald. Love also the trees, the plants, the water that runs though the meadow and on to the sea without knowing where it goes; love the mountain, the desert, the forest, the immense sky, full of light or full of clouds; because all these exceed man and reveal the eternal to you.
Savitri Devi
If there is a single fact which anyone who seriously studies the history of Christianity cannot help but be struck by, it is the almost complete absence of documents regarding the man whose name this great international religion bears -- Jesus Christ. We know of him only what is told to us in the New Testament gospels, that is, practically nothing.
Savitri Devi
Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
Emma Goldman
..begin by talking about the kind of existentialist chaos that exists in our own lives and our inability to overcome the sense of alienation and frustration we experience when we try to create bonds of intimacy and solidarity with one another. Now part of this frustration is to be understood again in relation to structures and institutions. In the way in which our culture of consumption has promoted an addiction to stimulation - one that puts a premium on packaged and commodified stimulation. The market does this to convince us that our consumption keeps oiling the economy for it to reproduce itself. But the effect of this addiction to stimulation is an undermining, a waning of our ability for qualitatively rich relationships.
Cornel West
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
Noam Chomsky
The old disease, thought Rubashov. Revolutionaries should not think through other people's minds. Or, perhaps they should? Or even ought to? How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody? How else can one change it? He who understands and forgives -- where would he find a motive to act? Where would he not?
Arthur Koestler
If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.
Thomas Paine
And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.
Lawrence Lessig
Money is permission to live.
H L Humes
We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.
Cornel West
it was Greenspan who through some excessive deregulation prepared the monetary ground for the rise of the subprime mortgage companies: a lending market that specialises in high-risk mortgages and loans.'Innovation', said Greenspan in April 2005, 'has brought about a multitude of new products, such as subprime loans and niche credit programs for immigrants'.It is almost touching to find out that Greenspan cares so much about immigrants.
Gilad Atzmon
The missile crisis "was the most dangerous moment in human history," Arthur Schlesinger commented in October 2002 at a conference in Havana on the fortieth anniversary of the crisis, attended by a number of those who witnessed it from within as it unfolded. Desision-makers at the time undoubtedly understood that the fate of the world was in their hands. Nevertheless, attendees at the conference may have been shocked by some of the revelations. They were informed that in October 1962 the world was "one word away" from nuclear war. "A guy named Arkhipov saved the world," said Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive in Washington, which helped organize the event. He was referring to Vasil Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine officer blocked an order to fire nuclear-armed toredoes in October 27, at the tensest moment of the crisis, when te submarines were under attack bu US destroyers, A devastating response would have been a near certainty, leading a major war. Pg 74, Penguin Publication
Noam Chomsky
It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. That’s not quite correct. We all forget history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us honest.
Lawrence Lessig
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.
Emma Goldman
We’re beings towards death, we’re featherless two-legged linguistically conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose bodies will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms. That’s us.
Cornel West
I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief.
Noam Chomsky
Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the “Innovator’s Dilemma”: the fact that large traditional firms find it rational to ignore new, breakthrough technologies that compete with their core business. The same analysis could help explain why large, traditional media companies will undermine our tradition of free culture. The property right that is copyright is no longer the balanced right that it was, or was intended to be. The property right that is copyright has become unbalanced, tilted toward an extreme. The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer.
Lawrence Lessig
In accordance with the prevailing conceptions in the U.S., there is no infringement on democracy if a few corporations control the information system: in fact, that is the essence of democracy. In the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the leading figure of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, explains that “the very essence of the democratic process” is “the freedom to persuade and suggest,” what he calls “the engineering of consent.” “A leader,” he continues, “frequently cannot wait for the people to arrive at even general understanding … Democratic leaders must play their part in … engineering … consent to socially constructive goals and values,” applying “scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs”; and although it remains unsaid, it is evident enough that those who control resources will be in a position to judge what is “socially constructive,” to engineer consent through the media, and to implement policy through the mechanisms of the state. If the freedom to persuade happens to be concentrated in a few hands, we must recognize that such is the nature of a free society.
Noam Chomsky
I remember the philosopher Bertrand Russell was asked why he spent his time protesting against nuclear war and getting arrested on demonstrations. Why didn’t he continue to work on the serious philosophical and logical problems which have major intellectual significance? And his answer was pretty good. He said: “Look, if I and others like me only work on those problems, there won’t be anybody around to appreciate it or be interested.
Chomsky Noam
One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies.
Noam Chomsky
Aberrations of the human mind are to a large extent due to the obsessional pursuit of some part-truth, treated as if it were a whole truth.
Arthur Koestler
They say (she had read somewhere) that no one ever disappears, up in the atmosphere, stratosphere, whatever you call space--atoms infinitely minute, beyond conception of existence, are up there forever, from the whole world, from all time.
Nadine Gordimer
Nature gave men two ends-one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.
George R. Kirkpatrick
Democracy today, especially in the English-speaking world, is a political system that specialises in positioning inadequate, unqualified and dubious types in leadership positions.
Gilad Atzmon
There is nothing ridiculous in love.
Olive Schreiner
The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.
Thomas Paine
Every man is insane, however only a few actually have true insanity.
Aaron Russo
The ritual denunciation of the so-called ‘socialist’ states is replete with distortions and often outright lies.
Noam Chomsky
The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.
Emma Goldman
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
Thomas Paine
I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.
Noam Chomsky
There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning!
Abbie Hoffman
The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.
Thomas Paine
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of a God. It...has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
Thomas Paine
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair but after all the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
Emma Goldman
I didn`t change. The Democratic Party slid to the Left from right under me.
Charlton Heston
What is it the Bible teaches us? — repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? — to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
Thomas Paine
Hey, I am thinking of it myself, in this part of world (East), we all do endeavors in praying and are sweating (white liquid) and this is our situation, frustrated , but on the other part of world (West) ,they are enjoying in party and drinking liquor (white liquid) but their situation is that, successful, I do not know that the problem relates to the type of liquid or the way of drinking!!
Ali Shariati
The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.
Banksy
The harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly 'tis dearness only that gives everything it's value.
Thomas Paine
You don't need planning permission to build castles in the sky.
Banksy
It is useful to remember that no matter where we turn, there is rarely any shortage of elevated ideals to accompany the resort to violence.
Noam Chomsky
Ni dieu ni maître!(Neither God nor master)[Feminist and labour slogan translated to 'No gods, no masters']
Louis-Auguste Blanqui
It is probable that the most inhuman monsters, even the Himmlers and the Mengeles, convince themselves that they are engaged in noble and courageous acts.
Noam Chomsky
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Banksy
There is nothing in life but refraining from hurting others and comforting those that are sad.
Olive Schreiner
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
Thomas Paine
Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.
Banksy
Every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense.
Thomas Paine
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
Arthur Koestler
We bear the world and we make it. ... There was never a great man who had not a great mother-it is hardly an exaggeration.
Olive Schreiner
The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal outside of the law.
Emma Goldman
We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and new Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries
Thomas Paine
First of all, we've never had capitalism, so it can't end. We have some variety of state capitalism. If you fly on an airplane, you're basically flying in a modified bomber. If you buy drugs, the basic research was done under public funding and support. The high-tech system is permeated with internal controls, government subsidies. And if you look at what are supposed to be the growing alternatives, China is another form of state capitalism...The question is whether these systems, whatever they are, can be adapted to current problems and circumstances. For example, there's no justification, economic or other, for the enormous and growing role of financial institutions since the 1970s. Even some of the most respected economists pint out that they're just a drag on the economy. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times says straight out that the financial institutions shouldn't be allowed to have anything like the power they do. There's plenty of leeway for modification and change. Worker-owned industries can take over. There's interesting work on this topic by Gar Alperovitz, who has been right at the center of a lot of organizing around worker control. It's not a revolution, but it's the germ of another type of capitalism, capitalism in the sense that markets and profit are involved.
Noam Chomsky
This market way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience.
Cornel West
For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings of her course. Her course had many twists and windings; such was the law of her being. And whosoever could not follow her crooked course was washed on to the bank, for such was her law. The motives of the individual did not matter to her. His conscience did not matter to her, neither did she care what went on in his head and his heart. The Party knew only one crime: to swerve from the course laid out; and only one punishment: death. Death was no mystery in the movement; there was nothing exalted about it: it was the logical solution to political divergences
Arthur Koestler
My own mind is my own church.
Thomas Paine
There are only two things that are absolute realities love and knowledge and you can't escape them.
Olive Schreiner