Henry Giroux Quotes

In the United States the state monopoly on the use of violence has intensified since the 1980s, and in the process, has been increasingly directed against young people, low-income whites, poor minorities, immigrants, and women.

Although police terrorism plays a specific role on behalf of the state, it is not the totality of what state violence looks like or feels like in our communities.

The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

Certainly I think the state is more than willing to not only attempt to change the consciousness of people, but to employ violence in ways that make people quite fearful.

Today it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people.

Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.

People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They're not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action. They might actually be participants if many people with limited resources could get together to enter the political arena. That's really threatening.

I was just a seventeen-year-old kid, going to Times Square to participate in this left-wing demonstration. The signs were for peace and justice and so on. But then I was attacked by police mounted on horseback and on foot. Before I knew it, I was clubbed and knocked unconscious. So it gave me a radical view of the United States, a critical view of the role of the state and of the instruments of the state - the police, the Army, and so on - as not being neutral at all in political battles, but being generally against workers and against striking people, against dissenters of all kinds.

I've told the kids in the ghettos that violence won't solve their problems, but then they ask me, and rightly so; "Why does the government use massive doses of violence to bring about the change it wants in the world?" After this I knew that I could no longer speak against the violence in the ghettos without also speaking against the violence of my government.

Panem et Circenses" translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.

Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.

We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general.

States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power

The violence of the Left is symbolic, the injuries are not intended. The violence of the Right is real - directed at people, designed to cause injuries. Vietnam, nuclear weapons, police out of control are intentional forms of violence. The violence from the Right is aimed directly at people and the violence from the Left is aimed at institutions and symbols.

We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly.

Mostly out of step, young people, especially poor minorities and low-income whites, are increasingly inscribed within a machinery of dead knowledge, social relations and values in which there is an attempt to render them voiceless and invisible.

Orders and decorations are necessary in order to dazzle the people.

I'm not a politician. I'm not a policy wonk. I was a political reporter, but that's not really what turns me on. What turns me on is how people perceive the issue and how people see people like me.

Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.

Autonomous state actions will regularly take forms that attempt to reinforce the authority, political longevity, and social control of the state.

A few public hangings will really change behavior. One of our Presidents said if he could execute three people each year for no cause, it would make it a lot easier to govern. When someone said that's not enough, he said, "Oh yes it is, because I'd publish the list of people under consideration."

Interesting. You Earth people glorify organized violence for 40 centuries, but you imprison those who employ it privately.

People in the political world have every incentive to say things that lead voters away from a clear economic understanding of issues. What has happened more and more is that organized groups have more and more reasons to say things that don't make any economic sense.

The State is the coldest of all cold monsters.

Repressive states are developing weapons that could cause destruction on a massive scale.