Political Quotes

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul." -Edward Abbey

"We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire — a crackpot machine — that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees." -Edward Abbey

"Representative democracy in the United States has broken down. Our legislators do not represent those who elected them but rather the minority who finance their poltical campaigns and who control the organs of communication- the Tee Vee, the newspapers, the billboards, the radio- that have made politics a game for the rich only." -Edward Abbey

"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others." -Edward Abbey

"Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines." -Edward Abbey

"If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream." -Edward Abbey

"Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners." -Edward Abbey

"The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses." -Edward Abbey

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." -Edward Abbey

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -Lord Acton

"What the American public doesn't know is exactly what makes them the American public." -Dan Akroyd, in Tommy Boy

"One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change." -David Barsamian

"The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred." -Daniel Berrigan

"If you pour enough wealth into the funnel at the top, those at the bottom eventually receive a little of the benefits themselves. One might ask, what kind of decent society requires making the rich that much richer to prevent everyone else from getting poorer?" -Barry Bluestone and Bennet Harrison, Growing Prosperity

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." -Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice 1916-1939

"If you can't raise consciousness, at least raise hell" -Rita Mae Brown

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." –Julius Caesar (fake quote, but still good)

"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

"Democracy is the worst system of government in the world — except for all the others." -Winston Churchill

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -Winston Churchill

"We must teach our children ... to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons." -Bill Clinton after the Columbine shootings, during NATO bombing of Yugoslavia

"Concentrated wealth leads to concentrated power, which explains why the rules that govern such things as global trade, Federal Reserve policy, and government spending and tax policy are tilted in favor of investors to the detriment of wage earners." -Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel, Tikkun magazine

"This summer, when you're being inundated by all the American bicentennial fourth of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating -- and that's the fact that a bunch of slave owning aristocratic white males didn't want to pay their taxes." -Dazed and Confused

"For the times, they are a changin'." -Bob Dylan

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -Albert Einstein

"If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidairty. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists." -Joseph Ettor, IWW organizer

"The oppressed of the Earth, rising, make their own law." -FOXFIRE

"There is no social theory on earth short of the divine right of kings that can justify a five-hundred-fold gap between management and labor, that can explain away the concentration of a decade of gain in the bank accounts of a tiny minority." -Thomas Frank, One Market Under God

"What good is a smart bomb when you've got a dumb president?" -Huey Freeman, The Boondocks

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism it's just the opposite." -John Kenneth Galbraith

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." -Ghandhi

"The basic assumption of U.S. energy/resource policy, which is hardly ever questioned, is that other societies, mostly in the poorer countries of the Third World, should give up control of their own resources because the United States and other industrial societies refuse to control their own culture of consumption." -Al Gedicks, Resource Rebels, p. 15

"You can't make a freedom omlette without breaking a few international law eggs!" -Get Your War On, 4/9/03, mnftiu.cc

"It takes less mental effort to condemn than to think." -Emma Goldman

"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." -Emma Goldman

"How long would authority...exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen." -Emma Goldman

"Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass." -Emma Goldman

"The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister." -Emma Goldman

"Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!" -Emma Goldman

"Hate your job, love your stuff, if you think that's living, you are wrong." -Juliana Hatfield

"A silent majority and government by the people is incompatible." -Tom Hayden

"A mind that is stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions." -Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The first casualty when war comes is truth." -Hiram Johnson

"The healthiest nations are not always the richest ones but the ones where there is the smallest gap between rich and poor." -Helen Johnston, Irish Times, December 5, 2000

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -John F. Kennedy

"The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people." -Frank Kent

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." -John Maynard Keynes

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing- oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." -Martin Luther King, Jr., "When Silence Is Betrayal", 1967

"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." -Martin Luthur King, Jr.

"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." –Martin Luther King, Jr.

"There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." -Martin Luthur King Jr.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A question you may ask is: Can a person who lives in the north woods of Minnesota have thoughts big enough for national policy debates or international policy forums? I would say yes. In fact, I would ask the inverse question. Can men of privelege — who do not feel the impact of policies on forests, on children, on the ability of mothers to breastfeed their children actually have the compassion to make public policy that is reflective of the interests of others? At this point I think not." -Winona LaDuke, during the 1996 Presidential Election

"If you have a zero tolerance policy on terrorism, you shouldn't finance them." -Winona LaDuke, speech at Northland College, 3/14/03

"The United States cannot stand on its moral high ground and pretend it was not the first purveyor of biological warfare." -Winona LaDuke (after mentioning the smallpox blankets), speech at Northland College, 3/14/03

"I am a patriot, but I am not a patriot to a flag, I am a patriot to a land." -Winona LaDuke, speech at Northland College, 3/14/03

"I was like many other fullbloods. I didn't want a job in an office or factory. I thought myself too good for that, not because I was stuck up but simply because any human being is too good for that kind of no-life, even white people." -Lame Deer

"Artists are the Indians of the white world. They are called dreamers who live in the clouds, improvident people who can't hold onto their money, people who don't want to face 'reality.' How the hell do these frog-skin people know what reality is? The world in which you paint a picture in your mind, a picture which shows things different from what your eyes see, that is the world from which I get my visions. I tell you that is the real world, not the Green Frog Skin World. That's only a bad dream, a streamlined, smog-filled nightmare." -Lame Deer

"I'm only an elected official, I can't make decisions by myself!" -The Mayor, The Nightmare Before Christmas

"We need more than two parties and more that two 'choices.'" -Michael Moore, online chat, 2/29/02

"In case you haven't gotten it yet, here it is in a nutshell. Criticizing the president is not the same thing as criticizing the troops. Criticizing the president is not the same as criticizing America. And criticizing the president is not 'giving aid and comfort to the enemy,' which is the classic definition of treason, a federal crime that earns felons the death penalty." -Brian Morton, Baltimore City Paper, 3/26/03

"I have no idea of submitting tamely to injustice inflicted either on me or on the slave. I will oppose it with all the moral powers with which I am endowed. I am no advocate of passivity." -Lucretia Mott, Quaker abolitionist and women's rights activist

"Ask people to tell you what they own. They'll talk about their house, their car, but never name public lands, timber, airwaves. It doesn't occur to them that we own these assets, because they're entirely controlled by corporations." -Ralph Nader, in Rolling Stone, Sept 14, 2000

"If you're not turned on to politics, politics will turn on you." -Ralph Nader, Green Party Nomination Acceptance Speech, June 25, 2000

"Insubordination may only be the evidence of a strong mind." -Napoleon

"First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out — because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me —
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me."
-Pastor Martin Niemöller

"Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian." -Robert Orben

"With unfailing consistancy, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries ... whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests." -Michael Parenti, political scientist, author

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." -Plato

"You can kill the revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution." -Rage Against the Machine & Tool, "Revolution"

"Fuck you I won't do what you tell me." -Rage Against the Machine, "Killing in the Name"

"Who controls the past now controls the future, who controls the present now controls the past." -Rage Against the Machine, "Testify"

"Raise your fists and march around Just don't take what you need I'll jail and bury those comitted And smother the rest in greed" -Rage Against The Machine, "Sleep Now In The Fire"

"There is no other pill to take, so swallow the one that makes you ill." -Rage Against the Machine, "Sleep Now in the Fire"

"[America] acts as though it can consume its way to security and virtue. The sad part is our leaders can't think otherwise. What they call freedom has become a relentless necessity to keep the growth machine churning, by whatever means and whatever the consequences to our global neighbors, our future, and ourselves." -Jonathan Rowe, in Adbusters #39

"Useless laws weaken necessary laws." -Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

"Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it." -George Bernard Shaw

"Rise like lions after slumber in invanquishable number — Shake your chains to earth like dew which in sleep had fallen on you — ye are many — they are few." -Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Mass media today is in the hands of a limited group of extremely wealthy owners whose interests don't coincide at all with those of the average soul living in a country where the gap between rich and poor is now unbridgeable. In this context, all criticism of the administration is automatically branded unpatriotic and un-American. Our media choose to ignore news that in the rest of the world receives wide prominence; if it were not for the Internet, even my view of the world would be extremely limited." -Art Spiegelman, interview with Corriere della Sera, 2/13/03

"4000 hungry children
Leave us per hour from starvation
While billions are spent on bombs
Creating death showers"
-System of a Down, "Boom!"

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -Tacitus (A.D. c.56- c.115)

"We can paint this pretty picture of ourselves, and hang it on the mantlepiece and spend much time admiring the noble thrust of our jaw and the steely glint of determination in our eyes, but if the rest of the world doesn't buy it, then it just doesn't matter how many locks we put on our door, or how high we build the gates around our compound — we will never be secure." -Tom Tomorrow

"That sick feeling in the pit of your stomach is the realization that our future is quite literally in the hands of the certifiably insane." -Tom Tomorrow, 3/11/03

"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers..... Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life..... But why would I want to do a thing like that?" -Trainspotting

"The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a person only tells them with all his might." -Mark Twain

"A candidate is someone who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other." -Unknown

"We've got the best government money can buy." -Unknown

"Killing for peace is like fucking for chastity." -Unknown

"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent." - Gore Vidal

"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too." -Voltaire

"I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." -Elie Weisel

"The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad foil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds — where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough — a modest living — and no man is made possesor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities." -Walt Whitman

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all." -Oscar Wilde

"A strong people do not need a government." -Emiliano Zapata

"If we once and for so long — lived in balance with nature and each other, we should be able to do so again." -John Zerzan

"Even for a good purpose war is absurd. By its nature, by its technology, war has become so massive and indiscriminate that no possible good can come of it." -Howard Zinn, radical historian

"It's a shameful moment in American history, the idea that we are going to attack a nation that is not attacking us, that is not attacking anybody else." -Howard Zinn, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, 3/17/03

"When I spoke recently on a radio show in Madison, Wisconsin, a caller asked: Why, grieving as we all should for the thousands of victims of the September 11 action, were we not grieving also for the thousands of people who die on the job, in industrial accidents?
"We could extend that question: Why are we not grieving also for the thousands of children who die every year in this country for lack of food and medical care?
"The answer seems clear: To do that would call attention not to obscure foreign terrorists but to a system of corporate domination in which profits come before the safety of workers. It would call attention to a political system in which the government can fund hundreds of billions for its military machine but cannot find the money to give free health care, decent housing, minimum family incomes--all those requisites for children to grow up healthy." -Howard Zinn, radical historian, Operation Enduring War

"Our most deadly enemies are not in caves and compounds abroad but in the corporate boardrooms and governmental offices where decisions are made that consign millions to death and misery--not deliberately, but as the collateral damage of the lust for profit and power." -Howard Zinn, radical historian, Operation Enduring War

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