David Ratliff > David's Quotes

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#1

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller

tags: activism, adaption, change, development, digital-revolution, future, movement, new-models, p2p, progress, progression, protest, revolution, science, society, structural-changes, technology, world, zeitgeist, zeitgeist-movement

1677 likes

#2

“If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.”
― Emma Goldman

tags: anarchy, music, revolution

1316 likes

#3

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

1241 likes

#4

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

tags: america, history, immigration, politics, revolution, united-states, usa

1113 likes

#5

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

[Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy

tags: peacefulness, political-rights, protest, revolution, violence

955 likes

#6

“But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.”
― Howard Zinn, Marx in Soho: A Play on History

tags: revolution, truth-telling

275 likes

#7

“You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.”
― Tennessee Williams

tags: dreamers, revolution

266 likes

#8

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
― Thomas Paine

tags: history, revolution

219 likes

#9

“Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”
― Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

tags: activism, non-violence, racism, revolution

187 likes

#10

“Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.”
― Norman Mailer

tags: activist, common, communism, democracy, philosophy, radical, revolution, sense, socialism

170 likes

#11

“It does not do to rely too much on silent majorities, Evey, for silence is a fragile thing, one loud noise, and its gone. But the people are so cowed and disorganised. A few might take the opportunity to protest, but it'll just be a voice crying in the wilderness. Noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap. Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations, Evey and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.”
― Alan Moore & David Lloyd, V for Vendetta

tags: protest, revolution, shock, silence

172 likes

#12

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”
― Dorothy Day

tags: catholic, inspirational, revolution

248 likes

#13

“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
― Emiliano Zapata

tags: defiance, revolution

242 likes

#14

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
― Thomas Jefferson

tags: democracy, politics, rebellion, revolution

87 likes

#15

“You see, gentlemen, they have something to die for. They've discovered they're a people. They're awakening.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: awakening, revolution

86 likes

#16

“Think about it: virtually every atrocity in the history of humankind was enabled by a populace that turned away from a reality that seemed too painful to face, while virtually every revolution for peace and justice has been made possibly by a group of people who chose to bear witness and demanded that others bear witness as well.”
― Melanie Joy, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism

tags: activism, revolution, witnessing

62 likes

#17

“The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”
― G.K. Chesterton

tags: anarchy, revolution

167 likes

#18

“There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women's bodies by men. The woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.”
― Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution

tags: bodies, control, patriarchy, politics, reproduction, revolution, women

54 likes

#19

“Revolutions are the things of the past. The current generation believes we get one life, and we should enjoy and live it to the fullest. That’s why they don’t know what sacrifice means. Revolution requires sacrifices and the people of today are neither willing nor capable of sacrifice. Therefore, we can’t have revolutions today. All we can have now are movements.”
― Abhaidev, The Gods Are Not Dead

tags: life-lessons, movement, movement-of-change, movements, revolution, revolution-quotes, revolutions, sacrifice, sacrifice-quotes

45 likes

#20

“What he realised, and more clearly as time went on, was that money-worship has been elevated into a religion. Perhaps it is the only real religion-the only felt religion-that is left to us. Money is what God used to be. Good and evil have no meaning any longer except failure and success. Hence the profoundly significant phrase, to make good. The decalogue has been reduced to two commandments. One for the employers-the elect, the money priesthood as it were- 'Thou shalt make money'; the other for the employed- the slaves and underlings'- 'Thou shalt not lose thy job.' It was about this time that he came across The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and read about the starving carpenter who pawns everything but sticks to his aspidistra. The aspidistra became a sort of symbol for Gordon after that. The aspidistra, the flower of England! It ought to be on our coat of arms instead of the lion and the unicorn. There will be no revolution in England while there are aspidistras in the windows.”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

tags: control, money, religion, revolution, symbolic

44 likes

#21

“Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.”
― Hannah Arendt, On Revolution

tags: beginnings, revolution, selfrealisation

29 likes

#22

“Carelessness on the part of revolutionaries has always been the best aid the police have.”
― Victor Serge

tags: repression, revolution

26 likes

#23

“A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

tags: revolution, social-movements

64 likes

#24

“It still would be years before I understood the seriousness of my change of view. Much later, I recognized it in "Revolution," the essay of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who describes the moment when a man on the edge of a crowd looks back defiantly at a policeman — and when that policeman senses a sudden refusal to accept his defining gaze — as the imperceptible moment in which rebellion is born. "All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people," Kapuscinski writes. "They should begin with a psychological chapter — one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process — sometimes accomplished in an instant, like a shock — demands to be illustrated. Man gets rid of fear and feel free. Without that, there would be no revolution.”
― Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem

tags: government, revolution

45 likes

#25

“Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier — and much, much harder.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

tags: action, administration, censor, censors, censorship, change, cheating, children, civil-liberties, civil-rights, control, corrupt, corrupt-politics, corruption, democracy, democratic, dissent, elect, elections, equality, fair, freedom, freedom-of-speech, future, government, hard, human-rights, injustice, justice, liberty, peace, people, politics, public, rebellion, regulations, revolt, revolution, rigged, rigging, risk, riskier, social-change, social-justice, stand-up, suppress, system, take-a-stand, unfair-elections, united, unity, vote, voting, world, youth

46 likes

#26

“You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.”
― Fred Hampton

tags: black-panthers, civil-rights, idealism, resilience, revolution

38 likes

#27

“But I don't shut up and I don't die.
I live
and fight, maddening
those who rule my country.

For if I live
I fight,
and if I fight
I contribute to the dawn.”
― Otto Rene Castillo

tags: guatemala, poetry, revolution

38 likes

#28

“You are asking me to give up everything for a cause that isn't mine. I don't want to be part of any revolution. I just want to live.”
― Sherry Thomas, The Burning Sky

tags: revolution

20 likes

#29

“I wondered: what happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?”
― Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing

tags: hope, poetry, revolution

15 likes

#30

“Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.”
― Emma Goldman

tags: anarchism, political-philosophy, revolution

176 likes

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