Angela Davis Quotes

All the big revolutions, whether it's the Industrial Revolution, the Arab Spring, those changes happened by economic and social shifts brought about by the people's voices, and those things weren't voted for. Most of our changes today are brought about through technology, not by voting.

I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me.

There is no real answer [to the U.S. economic crisis] but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.

I don't take a great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more.

My political career goes back to the '60s and those were times of vigorous debates.

Before we had the Internet, I organized a fax campaign against the first Iraq war. We blasted faxes to the hotel where James Baker and Tariq Aziz were having their final meeting before the two sides went to war. Much more recently, I co-founded Avaaz and Get Up, which inspired the creation of Purpose.

In every capitalist economy there are anti-capitalist movements, activists, and even political parties; in a way, that there are no longer anti-democratic movements, activists, and parties.

I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism.

It is because the fight against the harshest aspects of unrestricted capitalism is therefore a political problem and not an intellectual one that community action remains so essential.

There are reformers in every country.

Patriots have been incapable of removing one brick from this structure by “working within the system.” … There are two paths open to those who love the great America of their forefathers.

Voting for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal.... Of far greater importance is the economic organization of the working class.

Democratic rights develop when the ruled demand them and have the means to prevail.

The thing I have learned this year is that any improvement in the great mass of women is only possible through socialism…

When capitalism changes, so must socialism.

The world has changed. People who care nothing about norms can no longer be dismissed as a fringe. For generations, left-wing activists have instructed students and other groups that norms are the building blocks of a rigged system that deprives them of power and denies their “selfless” desires. We don’t want to acknowledge what this has wrought. We have norms because they safeguard foundational principles, such as due process, the presumption of innocence, and freedom from unreasonable and unwarranted police prying. But the Left is no longer attached to those principles.

I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I've argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth as I saw it.

If the only time you bang the drum is when it's time to get someone elected, and you don't get involved in a mass movement, then you're working against real and substantive change.

All left-wing activists, whether it be WTO, anti-WTO, or anti-war, are idealistic as framed by the Democratic Media Complex.

For the people of Baltimore, I don't criticize rioting, because I understand it. But after the fires die down, organize, strategize, and mobilize.

I believe activism is the true source of change in the world. Pushing to change social structures in communities that you are a part of is critical for making real lasting change.

The folks that are suggesting Occupy move to electoral politics are ignoring history, ignoring what actually creates change. People get involved in electoral politics because they think there is no movement that can create change.

I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.

I prefer social politics to politics.

He (Aneurin Bevan) enjoys prophesying the imminent fall of the capitalist system, and is prepared to play a part, any part, in its burial, except that of mute.