Bernardo Bertolucci Quotes

North American leftists just keep trying to relive the '60s, or to make the '60s happen again.

The Sixties are most generously described as a time when people took part - when they stepped out of themselves and acted in public, as people who didn't know what would happen next, but who were sure that acts of true risk and fear would produce something different from what they had been raised to take for granted.

I've got personal views on the '60s. You can't have freedom without paying the price for it.

I'm from the '60s, but no one has ever accused me of being a hippie. I never had much interest in the Woodstock crowd, which partied to change the world, while real people were starving to death in Africa.

At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to change the course of history.

My generation of the Sixties, with all our great ideals, destroyed liberalism, because of our excesses.

I think the Sixties in some ways is a barrier to young people today. They think of it, you know, what we're doing is not that. But it's partly the myth of the Sixties. It always felt embattled and small. It always, almost always, was a small group of people relative to the opposition around.

Sometimes going to jail is just the price you have to pay for social reform or social change.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

I think the greatest legacy of the 1960s was the general feeling that not only can you fight the powers that be, but you can win.

Many things happened in the sixties, but the period is no more significant, better, or more 'political' than today. It's time to turn the page.

A war still rages over the legacy of the 1960s.

Back in those days we thought we could change the world.

All I want to do is change the world.

Certainly there's a huge appeal to the '60s, because it was such a big turning point to everyone. It was the era of change, the boiling point. People rebelled against things - the hippies, the feminists, the protesters. All these things just built up and boiled over. I think people can relate to that today.

The one thing I witnessed over and over were these pretty young people who would throw themselves into a cause larger than themselves and believe they could change the world.

On one level the sixties revolt was an impressive illustration of Lenin's remark that the capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.

As far as I can tell, 1968 is a year about change, about revolution, about violence, about people turning inwards as community breaks down.

A lot of people think that the music was responsible for a lot of changes in the Sixties, but I think the music came out of it. The music wouldn't have happened without the social changes.

Disruption of the New Left

The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.

To talk about the '60s almost brings tears to my eyes. What we did. What we all did. We changed the world.

My presence is to instigate and incite the people for any change they want, and for not having a change that they don't wish to do.

Especially in the sphere of social activism, I think we tend to unwittingly conceptualize progress or revolution as black and white and having a clear beginning and end.

Come senators, congressmen, Please heed the call, Don't stand in the doorway, Don't block up the hall, For he that gets hurt, Will be he who has stalled, The battle outside ragin', Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, For the times they are a-changin'...