Bella Abzug Quotes

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

Our war cries opened the deaf ears of the almighty government and its accomplices.

Without alienation, there can be no politics.

Some of those men in power, we just have to change their faces because we're not going to change their minds.

They think that, if we were just smart enough, we'd be able to understand their policies. And I so want to tell 'em, and I do tell 'em, Oh, we're plenty smart, oh yeah - we know what's goin' on. And we don't like what's goin' on. And we're not gonna let them tell us to sit down and shut up.

Big corporations have money and power to make sure every rule breaks their way; people have voices and votes to push back.

The seed of revolution is repression.

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, you can't take part. And you've got to put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.

The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn't going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence.

It is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

If god is the root cause for our degradation destroy that god. If it is religion destroy it. If it is Manu Darma, Gita, or any other Mythology (Purana), burn them to ashes. If it is temple, tank, or festival, boycott them. Finally if it is our politics, come forward to declare it openly

Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counter-power, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.

There's always stuff to rebel against.

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

You can bring down governments, you can do a lot of things that are in your own interests even though liberals will get very antsy when you start talking about it.

People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely.

I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together.

Anybody intelligent enough to realize what America is, is not going to sit around and do nothing about it. They're going to be the same way that I am. They're going to be the same way our fans are. They're going to be pissed.

I think a reason that a lot of people feel politically paralysed is that it used to be clear how power was organised. But those who have their hands on the levers of popular culture today have great power - and it isn't even clear who they are.

Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.

There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is.

Just by making a decision to stay out of politics, you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it, if you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.