Patricia Hill Collins Quotes

Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge.

Readiness to change from old law to new law enfeebles the power of the law.

Power is being able to affect the hegemony of existing systems.

All great revolutions are led by aristocrats.

If bad institutions and bad men be got rid of only by killing, then the killing must be done.

It is easier to fix roads and train police than to change the deep-rooted incentives and habits of those in power.

Social change … almost inevitably leads to the rise of new political actors demanding a voice and a share of power.

… the process of social change was not merely a matter of new inventions pressing on old institutions: it was a matter of new classes displacing old.

If you want to change a country, you're going to be bumped every now and then.

There is no fundamental social change by being simply of individual and interpersonal actions. You have to have organizations and institutions that make a fundamental difference.

You can live within the institutions and work hard to change them.

You have to respect the system. If you have a problem with the system, change the system.

I think something that's really important to me is trying to do what I can from my position of power that comes with having a social media platform to dismantle certain systems that I think are really gross and harmful.

Grand economic theories rarely last more than a few decades. Some, if they are particularly in tune with technological or political events, may make it to half a century. Beyond that, little short of military force can keep them in place.

The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a 'dangerous enemy.'

I think it is my big advantage that I know Putin personally... that he can trust me, that he can see in me a new generation. I want to be a person who really makes him see how many people are against the system.

I am not a politician. I am just a simple person who has come to break down this system.

Everything I do is political.

I hope somewhere to break down what seems to be a kind of robotic communication between those in power and those who are understanding power.

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.

We need more courageous individuals who will defy the structures of power, whether political, economic, or intimate, but we also need it to be safe for people to feel their power and to be able to express their ideas and imagine without fear.

We don't have to accept an economy that doesn't work just because some people have got rich in the status quo. That is not democracy.

Nonviolence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used.

The challenge is to become part of the struggle, to make a positive difference.

Politics are not an instrument for effecting social change; they are the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.