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Quotes by Activist

"Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning."

"The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos."

"A mutual arrangement, I repeat, is the only satisfactory medium whereby the present system can be carried on with any degree of satisfaction, and in such an arrangement the employers have more to gain than the workers."

"Everything has to be done to build some sort of international democracy. We've seen only the tiniest beginnings of that."

"Let the veil of silence fall presently over what happened afterwards. Silence, too, can speak out."

"Money flows into the US, and inflates US assets, and allows the US to have a monstrous trade deficit. That means we are consuming more than we are producing."

"What is not fair now is that corporations pay less and less tax, which means that you and I pay more because we're rooted somewhere, they've got our address, right?"

"If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart."


"Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many."

"Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy."

"Speak of change, and the world is in alarm. And yet where do we not see change?"

"The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased."

"I shall not grow conservative with age."

"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship."

"The least I can do is show Medgar I still care. And Martin."

"Therefore coercion of the non-invasive, when justifiable at all, is to be justified on the ground that it secures, not a minimum of ' invasion, but a minimum of pain."
Pain,

"I made the right decisions, I set everything on the right course, the reforms are going in the right direction."

"We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism."

"There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms."

"I would be copping out if I stayed in the myth of the '60s."

"There are actually very few US politicians who have integrity and vision."

"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."

"Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination."

"He who uses the office he owes to the voters wrongfully and against them is a thief."

"The czar was always sending us commands - you shall not do this and you shall not do that - till there was very little left that we might do, except pay tribute and die."


"An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community - as SNCC does - must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan."

"The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land."


"The judge turned his back towards me, sitting back on his judge's chair, while I was in the witness stand being questioned. The whole courtroom was full of these anarchists, leftists, communists and Jewish lobbyists."

"So I'm in the Republican Party for the same reason I was in the Democratic Party: to make sure blacks are included, along with everyone else."

"When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put it down until you get to the end of the row."
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