Evo Morales Quotes

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard, and some people think it's boring.

The corporate-powered parties are not gonna do it for us, not the greater or the lesser evil. We have to do it for ourselves. And the minute we stand up and stand together, we are unstoppable.

When real substantive change happens it's the people who watch your show, they're the ones that make it happen. It's people whose names are not highlighted in history books. They're the ones that stand up in their place and time to make change.

I know that government doesn't have the all solutions that real solutions do not come from the top down. Instead, the ways to end poverty come from all of us. We are part of the solution.

Real, sustainable community change requires the initiative and engagement of community members.

You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.

The electoral system is not where change starts - it usually starts in communities and from the bottom up - but it is where change can be stopped.

Where there is a sufficient social movement of self-reliant communities, there can be political change. There must be political change.

Change happens from the bottom up - all of us as individuals deciding that we will and we do have an impact.

Occupy is anything but a protest movement. That's why it has been so hard for news agencies to express or even discern the 'demands' of the growing legions of Occupy participants around the nation, and even the world.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It's because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand - demand - demand change.

Turmoil is everywhere, and the whole world is waiting for solutions to come from the top down. That's not how it works - community change from the bottom up makes a real difference.

People say that the government should be doing this Yeah, but the government is not doing this. So we do.

The center of gravity has shifted from the courts to community action.

My personal belief in doing Brand New Congress is that the movement needs something to focus on that's constructive.

I've done community organizing my whole life and I think to myself, as an organizer, we don't wait for people to come to us and say, 'Help us organize something.' We go out into the community, and we bring the skills to a group of people to organize themselves.

change starts at the bottom. I think we're disempowered by the idea that it starts at the top, when really change is like a tree. It does start at the bottom.

The social revolution is seriously compromised if it comes through a political revolution.

We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.

The task is to transform society; only the people can do that - not heroes, not celebrities, not stars.

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

The idea of protest organizing, as summarized by community organizer Saul Alinsky, is that if we put enough pressure on the government, it will do things to help people. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking. But with globalization and the weakening of the nation-state, that kind of organizing doesn't work.

Ordinary people can bring about change.

Only an organized and conscious people can bring about a different kind of society.

We want to make nation-building a people's movement.