Rudolph Rocker Quotes

The women’s movement … does not need a political party, it is itself a driving force in political life and perhaps destined not only to transform party politics but to fill politics altogether with a different content.

Every major social movement in our history was fueled in large part by religion and faith. Abolitionism, women’s suffrage, child labor law, and most famously, civil rights.

Social change without music would be void of soul. Nonviolence without music, meditation, action, and a willingness to take risks probably doesn't exist.

The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.

I want to be known as a catalyst for change.

When you look at the times in history when change was brought about, there were two factors: crisis and leadership.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, it carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled.

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

The real cause of this, as all real popular movements, not stimulated by the aristocracy, … was an apprehension on the part of the people, that their civil rights were invaded.

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. And then you win.

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority. And as soon as this opinion is established, immediately by imperceptible degrees, but beyond power of frustration, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.

It is the moral force which carries a movement forward.

In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia and reality, but between different utopias, each trying to impose itself on reality ...

Only a social movement involving millions, most of us living far from these difficult settings, could allow us to change the course of history….troves of attention are required to reconfigure existing arrangements if we are to slow the steady movement of resources from poor to rich—transfers that have always been associated… with violence and epidemic disease… whether or not we can say “never again” with any conviction—will depend on our collective courage to examine and understand the roots of modern violence and the violation of a broad array of rights, including social and economic rights.

The Socialist movement is the abolitionist movement of the 20th century.

In America, even revolutions need a commercial sponsor.

Every movement takes a century to make its mark. The women’s movement is only 40 some years old.

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.

America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of its exhausted ideas.

Everything changes.... Social life changes, and with it the "national question" changes, too. At different periods different classes enter the arena, and each class has its own view of the "national question." Consequently, in different periods the "national question" serves different interests and assumes different shades, according to which class raises it, and when.

You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action.

The emancipation of women will only be possible if the traditional world of men also changes.

apolitical movement is always influenced by its leader’s personality.