Walker Percy Quotes

Heroism means going out of bounds. In this world things must go out of bounds from time to time... No one can desire that the world continue to muddle along in every respect in the groove into which imperfect laws and even more imperfect behavior have pushed it. Without heroic intervention no Council of Nicaea, no dethronement of the Merovingians, no conquest of England, no Reformation, no revolt of the Netherlands, no free America. The thing that counts is who intervenes, how and in the name of what.

Change comes when people are willing to commit acts of peaceful civil disobedience.

Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one

Revolution begins with one step

Gandhi was only minding his own business when he took a walk to get some salt and ended up overthrowing the British Empire. You can't set out to overthrow an empire, but if you have to get some salt then get some salt. If you have to write some independent songs that are honest, just write them. If you have to do a day job stacking shelves, so be it.

But we are not in the world to be good but to change it.

Don't accept the old order. Get rid of it.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

Security isn't what I hunger for. I hunger for change. I hunger for connection.

There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched.

Resisting is worth doing.

Start your own revolution, cut out the middleman In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune But this is reality so give me some room So join the struggle while you may The Revolution is just a t-shirt away

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but this is a revolution.

Non-violence is very weak in the theoretical sense; it cannot defend itself. But it is most powerful in the action situation where people are using non-violence because they want desperately to bring about some change. Non-violence in action is a very potent force and it can't be stopped. The people who are struggling have the complete say-so. No man-made law, no human ruler, no army can destroy this. There is no way it can be destroyed... And so, if we have the capacity to endure, if we have the patience, things will change.

It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it.

Revolutions are not made by fate but by men.

Revolution looks at the intersection ahead and pushes people to do the right thing.

Nothing I study makes me think we will survive this century. And yet why am I so happy? Because it's not too late. Just get off your ass and work for revolution.

I don't build a house without predicting the end of the present social order.

A revolution must aim at the destruction of the given order and will succeed only by asserting an order of its own.

Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.

We accept the world in order to change it. If you do not accept, then what are you going to change?

I am still radical!

A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you... where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.