Tom Coburn Quotes

We are at the point where we can mobilize all of this righteous indignation into a powerful mass movement.

Here is what is needed for Occupy Wall Street to become a force for change: a clear, and clearly expressed, objective. Or two.

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they've got to go about it themselves - they can't depend on a particular person, i.e. me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what's going on all over the world.

We are on the threshold of a significant breakthrough, and the greatest weapon is the mass demonstration.

The organizer dedicated to changing the life of a particular community must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community.

Art morphs with what's going on in the world. We say 'Ferguson'; we don't say 'Mike Brown.' Just like we say 'Selma,' not 'Jimmie Lee Jackson.' There is something startling about the people in a particular place, a city or a small town, rising up and taking to the streets.

Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.

I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.

As the Occupy Movement demonstrated, it's tough to change anything when you're talking about everything.

I thought my parents were always having card parties - and they were - but they were actually also having meetings to organize people. My older sister would be part of youth organizing, and she'd have dance parties. People would be dancing and talking about how to improve their neighborhood.

It's about cultural forums and movements and collectives of people taking a stand. That's all activism is.

What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up

Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force.

AIM in essence is a movement rather than just an organization. It is a manifestation of the desperation of our people.

Every great movement in the world starts with a tiny group of people who simply refuse to accept a situation.

At its essence, the message of the Occupations is simply this: ‘Here in the face of power we will sit and create a new society, in which you do count.’

When real substantive change happens it's the people who watch your show, they're the ones that make it happen. It's people whose names are not highlighted in history books. They're the ones that stand up in their place and time to make change.

I believe that change comes from the bottom, not the top.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

Any protester knows that the only way activism works is to get the people on your side.

While the revolution will be certainly televised, it strikes me that there is a strong possibility that the revolution will also be crowd-funded.

You can make the case that slacktivism is important because it makes people feel affiliated to a movement and be part of it, and talk about it.

I often tell people I don't care whether they join the NAACP or some other group, but you better join something.

I studied revolutions at university, and I think each revolution must begin with a moment of 'no.' If enough people have that moment at the same time, it becomes a movement.

At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people.