Naomi Klein Quotes

There aren't any messages in my social protestations.

The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

I do try to separate my personal activism - showing up at a demonstration or something - from what I write.

I think politics can no longer be assigned to parliamentary activity and it probably never could be. But politics with a small p and the history of trade union movement really interests me.

It came home to me indelibly that I was never going to change anything in America by walking around carrying a sign. It was a great revelation. It saved me a lot of anxiety and a lot of wasted energy.

“Student strike” has the same sort of emotional appeal to the French as “family farm” has in America.

If this is about holding meetings, if this is a social movement, where they gather 20, I will get up and gather 200,000 people. Where they gather 100,000, I will bring together 1 million from my party.

The center of gravity has shifted from the courts to community action.

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

People have to carry on with their lives, so only so much direct action can take place. Anti-nuclear activism may look dormant from appearances, but it’s there, like magma. It’s still brewing, and the next trigger might be another big protest or political change,

Millennials don't go to rallies.

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think - even the activists - that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: 'Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn't stop the war so what's the use of doing it again?'

I'd come from a background in New York of picketing and protesting.

The rise of civic society is not a negation of politics, but marks an opportunity for the involvement of the people.

People are not going to change because an activist goes around shouting.

I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.

As the Occupy Movement demonstrated, it's tough to change anything when you're talking about everything.

Some people see protesting as a bit of a dirty thing, and certainly the idea of getting arrested was not on people's radar.

Getting political representation is important, but change comes through using direct action, campaigning, and trade unions.

From the time I was little, I'd been kind of freaked out by the whole deal with large groups of people. And even moderate - sized groups of people. It's always made me very uncomfortable. It's such a strange phenomenon, what happens to people when they're all moving in the same direction, all chanting the same tune, the same line of slogans or something. That stuff always seems very alien and bizarre to me, and kind of scary.

Politics has always been personal for me. You know, growing up, I was in a very politically conscious household. We engaged with intellectuals and artists and academics from around the world who were thinking critically about politics and the intersection of politics and public life.

Everything I do is political.

No one can escape politics. We are all in it. Even if we shy away from it, I just decide to embrace it. And I try to be an ally for other fights.