top of page

"Twice the Republicans in the California legislature tried to block my seating because of my trips to Hanoi."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Politics quotes

"The biggest enemy of western people is not war or terrorism, it is their own governments lack of regulation of public health and safety."

"You can become a politician and improve the institutions of power in your country."

"The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau."

"The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"

"Politics is not leadership. It never has been. It never will be."

"The freest societies are in a constant state of revolution."

"Oppression is opposition."

"There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. That is a perfectly simple fact which the modern world will find out more and more to be a fact. Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion, full of merely verbal echoes of the older creeds. Those verbal associations are always vain for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant."

"Patriotism is the narcissism of countries."
Explore more quotes by Tom Hayden


"I don't think I'll ever fully get over losing the city council seat. I don't know how that happened. But it was less than 1 percent out of 50,000 votes. I'd put in six or seven years into changing L.A."


"If you look at the data, the inner city that was the riot zone lost 55,000 jobs in the ten years from 1992 to 2002, instead of gaining a surplus of 50,000."


"The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history that's least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970."


"The politicians of New York have everything that is necessary to make proper decisions and they will have to live with what happens afterwards. The worst scenario is the politicians covering their eyes and turning it over to the FBI."


"The peace and justice movement has to expand and not run away from the plight of gang members."


"I'm not ready to give you a clear answer on whether electoral politics holds any particular hope for progressives. It would mean that nothing I did ever mattered."


"Already this war on gangs in California is taking money from universities to build prisons, and the universities have some clout."


"I think people are entitled to march without a permit. When you have a few hundred thousand people on the street you have permission."
bottom of page