Ashraf Ghani Quotes

For me, 'revolution' simply means radical change.

Most governments and people want reform. It’s the prospect of change that makes reform rare.

Social change … almost inevitably leads to the rise of new political actors demanding a voice and a share of power.

You have to get an individual who's willing to actually struggle with the system to change it. As long as you have people who - to make substantive changes, to make infrastructure changes.

Especially in the sphere of social activism, I think we tend to unwittingly conceptualize progress or revolution as black and white and having a clear beginning and end.

There is a deep desire to change the power structure.

Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change. You have to have the idea of change or at least have a hope before you can proceed. And that stage goes very quickly because a contagion of consciousness is within your control. But when you get to the stage of institutional change, it becomes a much slower process.

We accept the world in order to change it. If you do not accept, then what are you going to change?

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.

It's the need for change that drives us to join forces with our brothers and sisters all around the world - but change is slow.

I'm part of an important movement that needs to happen.

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

Now we're in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change - we're doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change - inch by inch, day by day.

Revolution comes when human beings set out to correct decadent institutions.

I'm trying to change the world.

A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power.

Social change comes through people.

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.

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

Revolution is but thought carried into action.

Great institutions can only be reformed by stealth or by revolution.

The period of radical reform is finished.

The Arab world’s wave of change was a century in the making, Why expect its effects to become clear in the space of months

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.

… the process of social change was not merely a matter of new inventions pressing on old institutions: it was a matter of new classes displacing old.