Radical Quotes

“To be radical is to grasp things by the root.”
― Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

“Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden

Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently.”
― Rosa Luxemburg

“I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling! God you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha! But my point is... My point is, I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! Why can't you? I mean, you're not unintelligent! You must see the reality of the situation. Do you know how many times we've come close to world war three over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you know what triggered the last world war? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors! Telegraph poles! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side? Why aren't you laughing?”
― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke

“Personality begins where comparison leaves off. Be unique. Be memorable. Be confident. Be proud.”
― Shannon L. Alder

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

“In the conditions of this “New World Order,” a crucial part of the contemporary world economy is a criminal economy, in which the excess profits are accumulated not by the production of material comforts, but by drug-traffic, arms trafficking, and human trafficking, including prostitution. The contemporary world economy is an economy of the global organized criminality whose eminently form is the modern capitalist state. The contemporary world economy is an economy not of the real commodity production, but an economy of the jobbery; this is expressed directly in supply and demand of the capital of the speculation, i.e., in the fictitious capital trade, in the antagonistic games with share capital in the stock exchange. Just Wall Street’s stock exchange, i.e., the world speculative capital market, is the contemporary tremendous pump for inflation of the balloons of the world economic crises, the last one of which began in 2007. The aggregate amount of the bonds on the world market, as many economists know, is over one hundred trillion US dollars! Without taking in mind the derivatives! If including those, the aggregate amount is several times more! This is an enormous balloon as inflated as a red giant star! And when added to this amount the world market of the shares, the passing each other between real and fictitious capital grows to cosmic dimensions! This cosmic balloon will burst very soon! That means the most destructive capitalist crisis in human history lies just round the corner, the global economic apocalypse is just forthcoming! This ruin will be due to the stock exchange antagonistic games, the stock exchange that is, as a matter of fact, a gambling house! Because the securities and shares’ trading is sheer gambling! This becomes clear by the direct proportionality between risk and profitability, the more risk—the more profitability, and vice versa! However, this is gambling in which the stakes are not simply money, but millions and billions of human fates. So, this is a destroying-the-civilization-world crime economy!”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“This book was under arrest, along with its author. This event occurred on March 27, 1986. During that time, the totalitarian system in East Europe was called socialism and even by the scientific nonsense and absurd names of Communism and Communist system. In this system, the official ideology was allegedly Marxism, but really it could not endure any Marxist criticism. Since this “socialist” system was afraid of the weapon of criticism, it applied criticism of the weapon against its own citizens, as Marx would have said.”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“In a popular state the inhabitants are divided into certain classes,” Montesquieu affirmed in a Marxian manner a century before Marx! So, the popular state is a fiction; it is transient, fleeting, and for this reason — imaginable only. In its rigorous scientific sense of a class instrument, it is practically an empty matter sophism, a complete commonplaceness, an offspring of mental weakness. There is no such state! If it is a state, it is not popular! If it is popular, it is not a state yet! The State is a violent institution for social injustice generated by two main classes, which are main ones because they are at enmity… Any people closed in a state, are divided into classes. “For indeed any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich.”(Plato, The Republic).  Not Marx, still Plato said the truth!”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”
― Raymond Williams

“For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.”
― Brennan Manning, Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

“Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind ... when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom. Only conscious organization of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal.”
― Friedrich Engels

“Should it concern us that the bible never calls us to ask Jesus into our hearts. Should it concern us that the bible never mentions such a superstitious sinners prayer and yet that is exactly what we have sold to so many as salvation.”
― David Platt

“Radical Muslims fly planes into buildings. Radical Christians kill abortion doctors. Radical Atheists write books.”
― Hemant Mehta

“When I say that we must establish values with originate in sisterhood, I mean to say that we must not accept, even for a moment, male notions of what non-violence is. These notions have never condemned the systematic violence against us. The men who hold these notions have never renounced the male behaviours, privileges, values and conceits which are in and of themselves acts of violence against us.”
― Andrea Dworkin

“Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower.

The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.”
― Noam Chomsky

“On the 'Celestial Seasonings' green tea packet there is a short explanation of its benefits: 'Green tea is a natural source of antioxidants, which neutralize harmful molecules in the body known as free radicals. By taming free radicals, antioxidants help the body maintain its natural health.' Mutatis mutandis, is not the notion of totalitarianism one of the main ideological antioxidants, whose function throughout its career was to tame free radicals, and thus to help the social body to maintain its politico-ideological good health?”
― Slavoj Zizek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion

“Radical Edwards's profile? He's a seven-foot tall ex-basketball pro hindu guru drag-queen alien.
-Jet Black, from the Cowboy Bebop anime script”
― Keiko Nobumoto

“The process of trying to assimilate into an existing category in many ways runs counter to efforts to produce radical or revolutionary results.”
― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement

“We work side by side, and some of us imagine that because we are equal under the law, we are also the same. We are and should be equal under the law. But we are not the same - despite what some activists and politicians, journalists and academics would have us believe.”
― Heather E. Heying, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

“In one of his puckish moods Saul talked the president of a university into letting him anonymously take an examination being administered to candidates for a doctorate in community organization. "Three of the questions were on the philosophy of and motivations of Saul Alinsky," writes Saul. "I answered two of them incorrectly.”
― Nicholas von Hoffman, Radical: A Portrait of Saul Alinsky

“We should also not expect that men and women will make identical choices, or be driven to excel at identical things, or even, perhaps, be motivated by the same goals. To ignore our differences and demand uniformity is a different kind of sexism. Differences between the sexes are a reality, and while they can be cause for concern, they are also very often a strength, and we ignore them at our peril.”
― Heather E. Heying, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

“I'd rather be inspired by my competition than be jealous.”
― Jamine Anderson

“The duty of pain is to change you, either for better, or for worse.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia

“Jesus tries to get people to accept that God is extraordinarily kind and inviting, but this is too radical for many to accept. How can there be no payment system, no repentance schedule, no penance imposed upon either the prodigal son or upon us?”
― Stephen Finlan, Salvation Not Purchased: Overcoming the Ransom Idea to Rediscover the Original Gospel Teaching

“It may seem paradoxical that opposing what one scholar calls "the slow violence of settler colonialism" should lead people to celebrate the quick violence of terrorism. But part of the appeal of radical ideologies, of the right and the left, is that they make violence virtuous. And October 7 marked the moment when settler colonialism emerged into public view as the watchword of a new ideology, one that is already influencing the way many Americans think about their country and the world.”
― Adam Kirsch, On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice

“There is a broad spectrum of radicals. They are plentiful. Most humans are radicals.”
― Sabina Nore, Weird Genius: The Story of Your Ankh

“There is a broad spectrum of radicals. They are plentiful. Most humans are radicals”
― Sabina Nore, Weird Genius: The Story of Your Ankh

“Kirillov remained silent.
'You know what, in my opinion, your belief is even stronger than a priest's.'
In whom? In Him? Listen.' Kirillov stopped pacing, and stared straight before him with a fixed and ecstatic look. 'Listen to a great idea. There was a certain day on earth, and in the centre of the earth stood three crosses. One man on a cross believed to such an extent that he said to another: "Today you will be with me in paradise." The day ended, both died, they went and they found nothing - neither paradise nor resurrection. What had been said proved unjustified. Listen: this man was the highest on the entire earth, he comprised that which allowed it to live. The entire planet, with everything on it, is nothing but madness without that man. There has never been one like Him, either before or after, even by virtue of a miracle. The miracle is that there never has been nor will there be another such man, ever. And if that's so, if the laws of nature didn't spare even This One, didn't even spare his miracle, but compelled even Him to live amidst a lie and to die for a lie, then it follows that the entire planet is a lie and rests on a lie and on a stupid joke. It follows that the very laws of the planet are a lie and a farce put on by the Devil. What's there to live for, answer me, if you are a man?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“The media and the internet exist not to transmit knowledge as it is, but to amplify, exaggerate, and embellish the exact reality. Whatever is displayed upon the screens is rendered greater and more dramatic than its true form to attract mass interest. And if a person’s only “source of knowledge” is their screen, then that person may become stranded in a rigid world of black and white, blinded to the spectrum of grays that lie between.”
― Sov8840

“The louder the world becomes, the more radical it is to whisper truths. Not to be heard by all—but to be remembered by someone.”
― Lawrence Nault