Bernie Sanders Quotes

Over the past decade... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.

Don't accept the old order. Get rid of it.

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

If you compromise in any kind of movement or any kind of wave of revolution, if you sort of play the game, things are gonna change far more slowly than you need them to.

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

The revolution is a torrent which sweeps aside those who resist it.

All political action aims at either preservation or change.

America is a conservative country with a small “c” - they want change, but they don’t want too much change too fast.

Progress is never accepted by everybody.

Innovators reimagine our world in so many areas. We need them to help reimagine what government can and should be.

A book I often refer to by Naomi Klein is called 'No Is Not Enough'. It's not enough to be against something. You have to actually be for something. A better alternative. For me, that's about transformation.

The way I look at the world is establishment versus change agents. The establishment is those people who want to keep things the way they are. Change agents are people like me.

It has always been like that with changes. In 1913, we established divorce as a right for women in Uruguay. You know what they were saying back then? That families would dissolve. That it was the end of good manners and society. There has always been a conservative and traditional opinion out there that's afraid of change. When I was young and would go dancing at balls, we'd have to wear suits and ties. Otherwise they wouldn't let us in. I don't think anyone dresses up for dancing parties nowadays.

The tyranny that now exists is actual. That which may exist in the future is potential. If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.

The people see that Wall Street is running our economic policy, that big oil is running our energy policy and the military industrial complex is determining our foreign policy.

Resistance is the first step to change.

Tax the rich. End the wars. Break the power of lobbies in Washington. These are the demands of Occupy Wall Street. They are very important. The US corporations dominate Washington. The big oil companies, Wall Street banks and the military-industrial complex - they rule this country and their influence and power has to be broken.

I have taken on virtually every element of the big money establishment, whether it's the Koch brothers, and the big energy companies, whether it's the industrial complex, whether it's Wall Street... I have taken on the drug companies. I have taken on the insurance companies.

I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics. So I've spent some time thinking about how I could best advance the cause of change and progress that we so desperately need.

Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed.

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.

Revolution looks at the intersection ahead and pushes people to do the right thing.

When somebody comes up with a progressive idea, to begin with, you're mad, bonkers. Then if you go on, you're dangerous. Then there's a pause. Then you can't find anyone who can say they thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made. This is why I do believe in the vote. In the end, all these people who've been tempted to the right realise the warning lights in their constituency are brighter than the bright lights from No. 10 offering them things.

The greatest and most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that.