Henry Giroux Quotes

Today we are in a war against war - music is our power.

We must always refill and ensure there is a critical mass of leaders and activists committed to nonviolence and racial and economic justice who will keep seeding and building transforming movements.

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.

I'm in this band to give volume to various struggles throughout the world. To me, the tension in this band is a minimal sacrifice.

Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It's the impetus for creating change.

You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that.

Democracy comes alive not when government does anything, because government cannot be depended on to rectify serious injustices. It comes alive when people organize and do something about it.

Collective action is a means of power, a means by which individuals can more fully realize their individual values.

I've played hundreds of protests. I've marched on dozens of picket lines. I've strummed my guitar at innumerable demonstrations.

Being part of social movements like Black Lives Matter or organizations like NAACP, or any group representing a cause, gives you more resources, knowledge, and power. They can help you use your voice.

I've never lived through a moment in history where people are using their voices and becoming strong advocates for what they believe in.

It is so sad that it takes so long for people to understand what needs to happen in order to be free.

All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy.

It's only when you get towards the top that people start throwing you down a rope. It's like a law of nature, and it makes me think a lot about what my responsibility is to folks who are further down the hole where I was - how I can offer them help and how I can try to help change the structure of American society.

I think that the more of us who take the time to understand how someone else is feeling, the more likely we are to resist alongside them.

The more we reach out and become vulnerable and share our stories, the more people we will meet that will unite and help us to achieve more equality.

The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.

Collective action remains the best way of renewing the march towards the great trinity of liberty, equality, and solidarity.

To be part of building a movement, you have to keep moving.

There's been real hostility toward political poetry in the U.S., hostility or, at best, incomprehension. I'm speaking of those who have institutional power over what gets published, over grants andprizes and reviewing. Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging.

I think we're in a very distinctively different historical moment. I mean, I think that you had two things that were operating in the 1930s that seem to be, in many ways, to have been weakened or disappeared. And of course the beginning of the 21st century, I mean, you have - at one level you had massive social movements.

How young people are represented betrays a great deal about what is increasingly new about the economic, social, cultural and political constitution of American society and its growing disinvestment in young people, the social state and democracy itself.

Most of my work for the past 25 years has been devoted to organizing demonstrations, benefits and campaigns, many of which have had the effect of bringing a policy debate to public focus or moving a political agenda forward. It's become a cliché to say 'think globally and act locally,' but it works.

The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time.

Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.