Derrick Jensen Quotes

Let's demonstrate, illustrate, the ways in which our communities are being undermined time and time again, and make sure that the broader public and those in power choose to stand with us.

The wealthy have installed their slaves in the highest spheres of the state. The banks are privately owned. They are concerned solely with profits. They have no interest in the common good.

People say 'what do you mean' when you talk about 'bringing down civilization.' What I really mean is depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and depriving the powerful of the ability to destroy the planet. That's what I really mean.

The political system is not for the people. The people are secondary to the economy. It's about what generates money, not about what benefits the people.

The Occupy movement has drawn attention to how too many in the 1 percent get to play by their own rules while exploiting the 99 percent.

On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away.

The American People got fucked. Then tell 'em the American Family got fucked.

All the measures of government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Triumphant capitalism has unleashed a powerful drive toward inequality, not improvement, in the social sphere.

As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no," the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed.

Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.

You discover that the education the Negro gets is designed to keep him subservient. The poor black man is exploited by whites and by educated Negroes, too.

Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good.

There is a great silver lining to the 45th presidency, which is, it's hard to swallow that he is existing, which gives us the silver lining, which is a great uncovering of the historical disenfranchisement and marginalization of so many people in this country for so long.

No man-made system is perfect, and the system of oppression is no exception. It is subject to fatigue, to cracks, which you are the likelier to discover the longer your term.

I feel like, as a person of color, I've always been kind of doing the work against the tide.

I've always thought that there are many things still left in society that are detached from the sense of ordinary people. I won't overlook them and I will determine what is right before taking bold action.

Slowly but surely, little by little, many different groups of vulnerable bodies and people have been targeted from since the beginning of time, from since the beginning of the construction of America and all the civilizations from around the world pre-colonially.

We live in a time when all elites, whether on the left or the right, believe in rigid rules that say there is no alternative to the present political and economic system.

It's so easy to steal from the bottom 99 percent, but try stealing from the top one percent, and they put you under the jail.

Capitalism may have all sorts of things that are good, but ultimately, it's bad for everyone.

There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions - not just black women but other women of color. Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.

My first reaction to Trump being elected was a visceral one. I cried for black people in general but, more particularly, for those of us at the margins who have been struggling and who have never received enough support.

I do worry about a world in which the rich get to write the rules.

Misogyny - and racism - are 'hidden in plain sight,' and the burden of eliminating them should fall on the institutions, not the victims.