John Blair Quotes

To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbour, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service. The individual refrains and the commonwealth demands.

In the past, people worked together only when some great disaster threatened.

We have to restore power to the family, to the neighborhood, and the community with a non-market principle, a principle of equality, of charity, of let's-take-care-of-one-another. That's the creative challenge.

Let's help each other. New York, because New York is first. And then after New York, and after the curve breaks in New York, let's all rush to whoever's second. And then let's all rush to whoever's third. And let's learn from each other and help each other.

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

Solidarity is not an act of charity, but mutual aid between forces fighting for the same objective.

Cooperation called fraternity in the classic French formula is as much a part of the democratic ideal as is personal initiative. That cultural conditions were allowed to develop (markedly so in the economic phase) which subordinated cooperativeness to liberty and equality serves to explain the decline in the two latter.

I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community - not from governmental restraints.

It's very important for us all to understand that we are interconnected and we need to hold hands together, especially when the going gets tough.

Everyone must understand that you can't demand solidarity when there's a problem and shirk your duties when there are solutions.

People are seeking more power in the individual and less in government and institutions; they want more cooperation and less competition.

No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism - the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute - this is the only way of human life.

The motto of the Netherlands is translated into English as 'I will uphold.' But I want you to know that, as we go forward, our message together is not just 'I will uphold,' but 'we will uphold.'

Anarchism means all sort of things to different people, but the traditional anarchists' movements assumed that there'd be a highly organized society, just one organized from below with direct participation and so on.

We cannot, any of us, do all the things of which mankind stand in need; we must have fellow-labourers.

Our power creates collective production in the service of the people and the revolution, destroys exploiting production, transforms individualistic producers into producers integrated into the collectivity.

My hope is that the corona crisis will help bring us into a new age of cooperation and solidarity and a realization that we're in this together.

Help me help you help yourself is kind of the motto I have.

When I say that Kansas all rolls as one unit, they all roll as one unit. Like, everyone. They never leave anybody out.

We're a movement of many people who are uniting from the bottom up. We don't have structures, hierarchies, bosses, secretaries... No one gives us orders.

We, alone, can't change the country. We should do it together.

Intersectional organizing is the new agenda. And if we're gonna lose, we're gonna lose together. If we win, we're gonna win together.

In order to land a punch, you need to bring your fingers together into a fist. We need to join all of our forces together. That is the only way that we can win.

People have got to form some kind of unified fronts where you know who your allies are, you know who your friends are, and really begin to work together to create different kinds of infrastructures to protect one another and to help one another thrive.