Rick Perlstein Quotes

A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'

True conservatives fear anything that is at odds with the status quo, even to the extent of being unable to recognise when the status quo represents injustice. And reactionary conservatives actually want to tear down the gains of the past.

For most of human history, there was a ruling class and then there was everybody else. If you were part of everybody else, it wasn't your job to imagine a different future, different ways of doing things. So, imagination is a fairly modern phenomenon.

People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.

The work does not end with the abolition of slavery but only begins.

A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now!

All history is man's efforts to realize ideals.

The very name of the Bureau stood for a thing in the South which for two centuries and better men had refused even to argue, -- that life amid free Negroes was simply unthinkable, the maddest of experiments. The agents which the Bureau could command varied all the way from unselfish philanthropists to narrow-minded busybodies and thieves; and even though it be true that the average was far better than the worst, it was the one fly that helped to spoil the ointment. Then, amid all this crouched the freed slave, bewildered between friend and foe. He had emerged from slavery.

The first liberating revolutions never destroyed the large landholding powers that always constituted a reactionary force and upheld the principle of servitude on the land.

The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system …. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, sooner or later revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.

I began using the #smallacts hashtag on Twitter shortly after the 2016 election as a way to resist. To resist the intolerance growing in our nation, to resist an upcoming administration that I believe threatens to pull us backward and strip rights from those already marginalized.

The enemy will not perish of himself. Neither will the Chinese reactionaries nor the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism in China step down from the stage of history of their own accord.

Revolutions are not exportable: revolutions are created by oppressive conditions which Latin American countries exercise against their peoples.

This music is about struggle. Reggae is a vehicle to carry a message of freedom and peace.

When thier god and his exploiters cease to be adored and served, we shall live like comrades in mutual affection.

I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

The course of history can be changed but not halted.

The people that Donald Trump is putting around him on the Cabinet suggest that he's putting together a very conservative, almost traditionally conservative Republican group around him.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

Not only do we naturalize history, but also consequently we naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible

Think of US slavery in 1850, or the subjection of women. Both of these injustices could have been - and were! - defended by pointing out, quite correctly, that this situation of slaves and women had been improving throughout the preceding century. Slaves, in particular, were worked less hard, beaten and raped less frequently, better fed, and less often ripped apart from their families. So would a celebration of moral progress have been appropriate in 1850? Surely not. Slavery could have been and should have been abolished - then, if not before.

History is a record of the incessant struggle of humanity against ignorance and oppression.

Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.

The slave power dares anything, and it can be conquered only by the united masses of the people. From Congress to the people, I appeal.

Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.