Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us
Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.
The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.
Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.
If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
I do take the threat of terrorism seriously. You cannot eliminate that threat or diminish that threat by bombing a country.
I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization.
Even if you assume presidents were democratically elected they still have no right to keep secrets from the American people.
When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.
Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.
In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.
People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.
The only hope lies in the fact that the American people - like people everywhere - are basically decent people with common sense.
There is civil disobedience against the military machine, protest against police brutality directed especially at people of color.
Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.
There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.
When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.
If racism can't be shown to be natural then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions.
Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.
But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power.
Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end.
If you join a fight for social justice you may win or lose, but just by being part of the struggle, you win, and your life will be better for it.
[W]e're taught that if one person kills another person, that is murder; but if a government kills a hundred thousand persons, that is patriotism.
What we have is a more sophisticated form of imperialism, which is economic. But lurking in the background, always ready to go, is an armed force.
What motivates me is the desire to bring up a whole new generation of active citizens who believe in peace and social justice and will work for it.
When we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress.
War is terrorism ... Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause. That's what terrorists are about.
If there is going to be change, real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That's how change happens.
Being fired has some of the advantages of dying without its supreme disadvantages. People say extra-nice things about you, and you get to hear them.
When in all the nations of the world the rule of law is the darling of the leaders and the plague of the people, we ought to begin to recognize this.
What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who is sitting in" - and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.
I had volunteered for the Air Force and was an enthusiastic bombardier. While dropping bombs on Europe, I generally didn't understand what I was doing.
The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.
The meaning ... of a writer will be found not just in what he intends to say, or what he does literally say, but in the effect of his writing on living beings.
Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.
Again and again, Americans have voted for a president to keep them out of a war, only to see the "peace" candidate elected who then brings the nation into war.
One of the problems with dealing with anarchism is that there are many people whose ideas are anarchist, but who do not necessarily call themselves anarchists.
I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.
When [Ralph Waldo] Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, 'What are you doing in there?' it was reported that Thoreau replied, 'What are you doing out there?'
Yes, we're dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don't want war. We don't want capitalism. We want a decent society.
That's generally true of people who drop bombs from high altitudes. You don't know what's going on below. You don't see the human consequences of what you're doing.
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
The Roman Empire came to an end, but the Roman people didn't come to an end, so I see the American Empire coming to an end just as other empires have come to an end.
To ward off alienation and gloom, it is only necessary to remember the unremembered heroes of the past, and to look around us for the unnoticed heroes of the present.
People who have no respect for human life or for freedom or justice have taken over this beautiful country of ours. It will be up to the American people to take it back.
We all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas.
Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed.
And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.
The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values.