Mikhail Khodorkovsky Quotes

Together, together, my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America, and that revolution, our revolution, continues!

My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you'll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you're going to have to keep on saying that. You're going to have to say that I am a proletariat; I am the people.

Being politically active is "more about doing things, not just standing for some platform or being involved in some political party."

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.

The most exciting things going on in America today are movements to change America.

Gandhi: Ninny of the 20th Century.

I do believe that if millions of people do stand up and fight back, we can stop Donald Trump from doing some really awful things.

I think it's terribly important that networks of anarchists establish themselves with a view toward educating people.

There's a reason people pause their lives to engage in political activism and pressure their local political leaders. Because as a whole, even if you can't identify any one instance, as a whole pressure works and sometimes it starts with something as simple as pushing the button on the intercom.

You can holler, protest, march, picket and demonstrate, but somebody must be able to sit in on the strategy conferences and plot a course. There must be strategies, the researchers, the professionals to carry out the program. That's our role.

We can't continue assuming that politics is something which is decided elsewhere by distant leaders in a distant capital. Protest is insufficient too. If people who are willing to put time into demonstrations also prove willing to work on behalf of candidates in local elections - or to become candidates themselves - they will achieve far more. If all of this upheaval provokes more involvement, then we have a slim chance of ending up with more vibrant democracies eventually. The alternative, as you've hinted, is that democracy fails altogether.

We need to also act out, and anything that [Donald] Trump does, anything he's trying to do that we don't agree with or anything this country is doing in general that we don't agree with, we need to protest, we need to make our voices heard. And that has to go beyond Twitter - for me as well.

Leftism should be about the people. That's how it began.

You know, when we get to a point in this country where dissent is extremism, we've turned, I think, a very dark page in our history. And I don't want us to go there. I encourage Americans and I'm - right now, to go to these town hall meetings, to - to talk to your Congressmen, the people that you elected.

Special interests and opponents have figured out how easy it is to disrupt town halls and get their own message out. The days of the truly free-form town halls may be over.

At the moment I am a little bit politician, yes. I think that could be my next step. It is not because I want power, it is because of what I think I could do for the people.

It seems the only way to gain attention today is to organize a march and protest something.

My early years as a political activist were dominated by the poll tax.

When they put me in jail, that's when they turned me into an activist. Up until the time I went to jail, I was just a comedian.

I always saw politics as an expansion of my role as a mom.

All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.

Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people.

Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.