Bassem Youssef Quotes

And let me say this as a politician I can promise you this, political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see.

The people themselves must think, because the people alone can act.

It is no longer appropriate for me as an American to sit by and expect my government to get it done.

I am one who believes in the power of the people. I am inspired when I see people hit the streets, who challenge their elected officials, and are willing to stand up and fight. I encourage it.

The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.

The only way change happens is when people become more significantly involved in the political process. We have to increase voter turnout and citizen participation so that people know what's going on and demand a government that works for everybody and not just the one percent.

Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion.

If people want change, then they will find a way to get that change. So, whatever technology they may or may not have used was neither a necessary nor sufficient case for getting to the outcome that they got to, but having people who wanted change was.

If civil disobedience is the way to go about change, than I think a lot of people will be going to San Francisco

People power. It has no limits.

The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination.

Most scientists know what needs to be done to save our Earth. But the politicians don't listen to them. They will listen to popular pressure; the people got to supply that.

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed.

During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.... The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy.

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 power of the masses can influence any government in the world. The power of the masses can elect an official, start a revolution, and drive history. Nelson Mandela did it alone from his prison cell. Ghandi did it lying down. Egypt did it singing songs.

There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.

Any individual can contribute its own belief. And our society or even our government are made by the people. The people would have the final voice, but it requires each individual to act. If we don't act, then the result is very clear. So for too long Americans take liberty as granted. We think we are in the safe hand, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.

I do think that all politicians today have to be more attentive to people wanting to be heard, wanting to have more control over their lives.

A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.

We need to come together sometimes and show our strength, so that the Donald Trump administration at its 100th day is under no illusions that people are somehow in a fog. We know absolutely what this guy is doing, and boy, are we pissed off about it.

Chile has changed. The people have become more mature and they are more conscious of their rights. They want to participate and have a say about things such as if and where a power plant can be built.

From Gandhi to Mandela, from the American patriot to the Polish shipbuilders, the makers of revolutions have not come from the top.

If people were silent, nothing would change.

It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives. It is far more difficult--and far more precious--to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist.