John Harrison Nichols > Quotes

“Modern wars as a rule have been caused by the commercial and financial rivalry and intrigues of the capitalist interests in the different countries. Whether they have been frankly waged as wars of aggression or have been hypocritically represented as wars of “defense,” they have always been made by the [ruling] classes and fought by The Masses. Wars bring wealth and power to the ruling classes, and suffering, death, and demoralization to the workers.”
― John Harrison Nichols

“If Feingold does it, if he wins this race in this year, it will not be as just another Democratic senator. It will not be as a maverick, nor even as an idealist. It will be as a signal that maybe, just maybe, people power can still beat the money power. That senators aren't just extensions of parties and presidents, and that politics can be about something more than Democratic toothpaste versus Republican toothpaste.”
― John Harrison Nichols

“Wallace was against the conservatives, wherever he found them, and at every stage of his life. A born-and-bred “Party of Lincoln” Republican who became a Teddy Roosevelt Bull Moose Progressive in 1912, he then returned to the Republican fold and remained there until he embraced Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette’s independent Progressive campaign of 1924.”
― John Harrison Nichols

“Presidents can be exceptional men or awful men, and soon presidents will be women.”
― John Harrison Nichols, Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America

“Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman’s case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday.”
― John Harrison Nichols

“Of the “very self-righteous,” “nasty and mean-spirited” and “prejudiced” conservatives without conscience who were becoming the face of the Republican Party, Dean observed: “They are typically men whose desire in life is to dominate others and to be in charge. They are very aggressive when they do so. They are highly manipulative. They are also people who have absolutely no appreciation of equality of others. They see themselves as superior, and they are amoral in their thinking.” So amoral that, for reasons of political convenience, they might even reject public health mandates during a pandemic.”
― John Harrison Nichols, Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers: Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis

“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. —Henry Wallace, New York Times, April 9, 1944”
― John Harrison Nichols

“In the 2010s, the Democrats were as inept and visionless as the Republicans were calculating and cruel.”
― John Harrison Nichols

“If we step back and observe with an honest eye the history of our political parties, we see a story of stark and unsettling contrasts. Republicans do not win every election. Yet their party has pulled the country steadily to the right, controlling and corrupting the federal courts, initiating and maintaining endless wars and extending the reach (and the budgets) of the Pentagon, imposing austerity in order to fund tax cuts for the rich. The planet has burned. Nationalism, xenophobia and racism have been mainstreamed. No survey suggests that this is what America wants. Yet this is what we have. Why? Because we lack an adequate opposition. The Democrats have bent, again and again and again, to the demands of investment-bank campaign donors, apologists for the military-industrial complex, and Third Way hucksters.”
― John Harrison Nichols

“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,” said King. “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”
― John Harrison Nichols

“Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism.”
― John Harrison Nichols