Pat Downs > Pat's Quotes

“Democracy wasn't a set of dry documents nicely laid out on office stationary - it brimmed in the lips of thousands of souls and debated in dozens of accents as it crossed the street from one neighborhood to the next. It was the smell of stale coffee and bodies packed into an old community center. It was the typos in the fliers. It was exasperation, realization, illumination - a knockdown, drag out, sweaty, tearful, impassioned process of people making decisions together.”
― Rivera Sun, The Roots of Resistance: - Love and Revolution -

“WHO OWNS THE MEDIA? Most Americans have very little understanding of the degree to which media ownership in America—what we see, hear, and read—is concentrated in the hands of a few giant corporations. In fact, I suspect that when people look at the hundreds of channels they receive on their cable system, or the many hundreds of magazines they can choose from in a good bookstore, they assume that there is a wide diversity of ownership. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. In 1983 the largest fifty corporations controlled 90 percent of the media. That’s a high level of concentration. Today, as a result of massive mergers and takeovers, six corporations control 90 percent of what we see, hear, and read. This is outrageous, and a real threat to our democracy. Those six corporations are Comcast, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. In 2010, the total revenue of these six corporations was $275 billion. In a recent article in Forbes magazine discussing media ownership, the headline appropriately read: “These 15 Billionaires Own America’s News Media Companies.” Exploding technology is transforming the media world, and mergers and takeovers are changing the nature of ownership. Freepress.net is one of the best media watchdog organizations in the country, and has been opposed to the kind of media consolidation that we have seen in recent years. It has put together a very powerful description of what media concentration means.”
― Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution

“Bill McKibben named his climate change advocacy group 350.org, because 350 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide is what Dr. James Hansen, former head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the most respected climatologists in the world, says is the maximum level to “preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.” Tragically, we have now exceeded 400 ppm.”
― Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

“[T]he Federal Communications Commission should reestablish two principles that formerly served this country well: the public service requirement and the fairness doctrine. Every television and radio station should once again be required to devote a meaningful percentage of its programming to public service broadcasting. The public, after all, owns the airwaves through which signals are broadcast, and the rights-of-way in which cables are strung. And every television and radio station should once again have to follow the fairness doctrine: those with opposing views should have the right to respond to viewpoints expressed on the station.”
― Bernie Sanders, Outsider in the White House

“One of the more profound lessons that I've learnt in politics is that everything is related to everything else. Nothing exists in a vacuum.”
― Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

“The American people want to know that when they borrow a book from the library or buy a book, the government won't be looking over their shoulder. Everybody wants to fight terrorism, but we have to do it in away that protects American freedom.”
― Bernie Sanders

“You can’t become a billionaire stepping over children sleeping on the street.”
― Bernie Sanders, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class

“The rich and large corporations get richer, the CEOs earn huge compensation packages, and when things get bad, don't worry; Uncle Sam and the American taxpayers are here to bail you out. But when you are in trouble, well, we just can't afford to help you, if you are in the working class or middle class of this country.”
― Bernie Sanders, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class

“We live in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but that reality means little because almost all of that wealth is controlled by a tiny handful of individuals. There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much as the bottom 90 percent, and when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. There is something profoundly wrong when one family owns more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans. This type of immoral, unsustainable economy is not what America is supposed to be about. This has got to change, and together we will change it. The change begins when we say to the billionaire class: “You can’t have it all. You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can’t continue sending our jobs to China while millions are looking for work. You can’t hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while there are massive unmet needs in every corner of this nation. Your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America if you refuse to accept your responsibilities as Americans.”
― Bernie Sanders, Outsider in the White House

“And let me make the radical statement that I don’t believe that you can say something profound in the 140 characters that make up a tweet.”
― Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

“We don't want to see our kids and grandchildren be the first generation in the modern history of America to have a lower standard of living than their parents.”
― Bernie Sanders, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class

“Republicans have cultivated, into a fine art, the ability to divide people up by race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation. That’s what they do. That is the essence of their politics. They get one group to fight another group while their wealthy friends and campaign contributors get richer and laugh all the way to the bank.”
― Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

“As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reminded us: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”
― Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

“This campaign was never just about electing a president of the United States—as enormously important as that was. This campaign was about transforming America. It was about the understanding that real change never takes place from the top on down. It always takes place from the bottom on up. It takes place when ordinary people, by the millions, are prepared to stand up and fight for justice.”
― Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In

“When we stand together there is nothing, nothing, nothing we cannot accomplish.”
― Bernie Sanders

“Let's be clear. The debate over health care in this country is not a debate about medical treatment or the best way to prevent disease. It is a debate about economics and class politics. Either we maintain a profit-driven health care system whose main function is to enrich certain individuals and institutions, or we develop a nonprofit, cost-effective system that provides quality health care for all people as a right of citizenship.”
― Bernie Sanders, Outsider in the White House

“When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need to do more than just win the next election. It's about creating a situation where we are involving millions of people in the process who are not now involved, and changing the nature of media so they are talking about issues that reflect the needs and the pains that so many of our people are currently feeling. A campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected. It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that, we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are (and make demands based on that knowledge), Washington and Congress will look very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with.”
― Bernie Sanders, Outsider in the White House

“Democracy is not a spectator sport”
― Bernie Sanders

“The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina, ran for Senator. This is what she said when she was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 2004: “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore.” I could go on and on and on, but I think we have the point.”
― Bernie Sanders, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class

“more tax breaks for the very rich is only one symptom of an economic and political system that is grotesquely failing the average American.”
― Bernie Sanders, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse

“I believe the stars align so souls can find one another. Whether they are meant to be souls in love or souls in life remains to be seen.”
― Renee Ahdieh, Flame in the Mist

“Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

“I climb aboard my tricycle and pedal my heart to the stars.”
― Harley King

“wherever you go,wherever you live, still the stars up there will remain the same, as they were when we were together.”
― Jaymin Panchasara

“You don't always have to see the stars. Sometimes it's enough to know that they're there.”
― Meg McKinlay, Catch a Falling Star

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
― James Waterman Wise

“Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: "Love. They must do it for love." Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love the weather, maybe even when it is making them miserable. They love to live where they work and to work where they live. If the scale of their farming is small enough, they like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide. I have an idea that a lot of farmers have gone to a lot of trouble merely to be self-employed to live at least a part of their lives without a boss.”
― Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food

“We all shine on...like the moon and the stars and the sun...we all shine on...come on and on and on...”
― john lennon