Jose Mujica Quotes

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

Even with, or perhaps, because of, this background, I have over the past few years sensed a very dramatic change in attitude on the part of Prince Edward Islanders towards the on-going rush for so-called modernization.

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

I think we are making progress, but we have long way to go. People also have got to understand the agenda that we are fighting for. This is a senator who has taken on every powerful special interest, whether it's Wall Street, whether it's drug companies who are ripping off the American people, the military industrial complex.

All human advances occur in the outlaw area.

The Supreme Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust... Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change.

Change often makes accepted customs into crimes.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.

Many are friends to the success of reformation, not to reformation.

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.

Reading recent history is good to humble yourself, and also to feel some hopefulness that there is progress.

Resisting the powers that be, we are keeping things from getting worse than they otherwise might be. And that effort is very much worthwhile.

The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

Habit creates the appearance of justice; progress has no greater enemy than habit.

The struggle of today is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

Revolution begins with one step

Resistance is the first step to change.

Customs change with time, so it isn't fair to permit change only when you happen to approve of it but condemn change citing biblical authority when you don't.

Nothing has changed, or will change. So we must change it.

In this Revolution, no plans have been written for retreat. Those who will not get into step will find that the parade has passed them by.

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.

Any time you step forward, someone gets upset.