Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Political evils must be sorely felt before they can be removed.

Social change can be painful for all involved—oppressor and oppressed.

If god is the root cause for our degradation destroy that god. If it is religion destroy it. If it is Manu Darma, Gita, or any other Mythology (Purana), burn them to ashes. If it is temple, tank, or festival, boycott them. Finally if it is our politics, come forward to declare it openly

A status not freely chosen or entered into by an individual or a group is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature (i.e., oppressed) forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.

That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.

Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.

But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!

If we accept the rule of those who think they are the bosses and lords of Mexico, nothing will change for the people on the bottom.

The revolution... is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

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.

Sometimes, when a tide starts to sweep, it makes no difference what the traditions are.

Those who govern us know it well, for they would sooner deny us bread than dare alter the observance of tradition.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

Some people like to reform everything they can get their hands on. Others want to fold away and worship whatever is presented to them by the caprice of history.

Action requires co-operation, but in general if you set your face against custom, people will set their faces against you. They cannot tell whether you are right or wrong, but they know that you are guilty of a pragmatical assumption of superiority over them which they do not like.

The First Law of Class Warfare: Once inequalities develop, the upper classes can, with relative ease, drastically reduce the probability of success for any equalizing challenges to the system.

Custom is petrification; nothing but dynamite can dislodge it for a century.

Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change – for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it – but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it.

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.

I think when you see that the status quo creates pain and anguish and suffering, what I am most afraid of is that things will stay the same.

The powerful don't make revolutions

There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws.