Harlan Ellison Quotes

Every time there's a revolution, it comes from somebody reading a book about revolution. David Walker wrote a book and Nat Turner did his thing.

The National Socialist Revolution is not simply the taking of power in the state by one party from another, but brings a complete revolution of our German existence. Henceforth every matter demands decision, and every act demands responsibility.

It is a great law of social development that the movement from slavery to freedom is also a movement from security to insecurity of maintenance.

Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

The mainstream is always under attack.

You should live hoping you are going to offend people, because then you're doing something.

Bohemia isn't somewhere an artist runs to escape society. It's a place where like-minded artists gather to plot the downfall of dogma and ignorance.

The youth should come together to challenge the status quo. They must not give up.

It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.

I want to live in a world where 'normal' is an insult.

Part of the heart of anarchy is, dare to go against the grain of the conventional ways of thinking about our realities. Anarchists have always gone against the grain, and that's been a place of hope.

The function of the rebel is to shake the fixated mores of the rigid order of civilization; and this shaking, though painful, is necessary if the society is to be saved from boredom and apathy. Obviously I do not refer to everyone who calls himself a rebel, but only to the authentic rebel. Civilization gets its first flower from the rebel.

A small man intoxicated by being allowed to run around with the big, aggressive, powerful boys after so many years as a corduroy-clad peacenik.

It is my job to make runs for the country and win. That is the job I have to do.

It may not happen in my lifetime, but if I can play a part in moving things along, then I feel I've done a good job.

I almost feel like it's an obligation to not further the status quo if you become somebody with influence and exposure.

All art is based on nonconformity ... Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, no public education system, no nation upon this continent, no continent, no science at all, no philosophy, and considerably fewer religions.

We're not dropping out here, we're infiltrating and taking over.

But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.

If You Want To Rebel Against Society, Don’t Dull The Blade

I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right.

...no movement for social change has ever succeeded without 'the militarism component'....Thinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out

In a certain way, my work had set me up to be against lots of things. If there wasn't some sort of sanction for it in the public world, it might have been...it wouldn't have been tolerated, because people don't want things to get shaken up.

I think [rock'n'roll] essence is what made it good and has a lot in common with what originally made monotheism good - it's against everything that is fixed, all the social structures that you can't go past.