Joe Strummer Quotes

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.

There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.

White men have too many chiefs.

There are .. two choices: obedience to institutional authority or radical dissent from it.

I only want to debate people who are more powerful than I am.

Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him a slave to the power of others.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Power wears out those who do not have it.

Men in authority tend to abuse it – not all men, but many.

Primacy of persons over structures.

Already I realize the tremendous effort it requires not to be taken over by the Civil Service. My Minister’s room is like a padded cell, and in certain ways I am like a person who is suddenly certified a lunatic and put safely into this great vast room, cut off from real life ... Of course, they don’t behave quite like nurses because the Civil Service is profoundly deferential – “Yes, Minister! No, Minister! If you wish it, Minister! Yes minister.”

Men love power.

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth. The historical method is supposed to prove that economic changes have been the inevitable outcome of natural laws. It just as often proves them to have been brought about by the self-seeking action of dominant classes.

The black knows his place, and if not, I'll tell him his place.

Power is insinuating. Few men are satisfied with less power than they are able to procure.

I do not wish to see men of culture asking to be entrusted with power

The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man.

Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

As the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power.

Every elite seeks its own perpetuation, of course, but that project is uniquely difficult in a society that's formally democratic and egalitarian and colorblind.