Dean Baker Quotes

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.

The point is change can come about, but it only comes about when millions of people are actively involved in political struggle, the billionaires may have the money, but we have the people.

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.

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.

The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens.

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes, ... it strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.

Americans have a tendency to exalt the concept of a popular uprising.

America won't be saved because one or 10 people stand up. It will be saved because millions of us stand up.

My take is that there's two ways to approach history. You sit in your armchair and you watch it on the news and you return to your PlayStation. Or you get out in the streets and you make it. Like, when those Supreme Court justices, you know, legalize desegregation, it wasn't due to their infinite wisdom. It's because people whose names you do not read about in history books, people whose faces you will never see, were the ones who struggled and sacrificed, sometimes gave their lives, to make this country a more equal one. When, it's like those people don't make history, it's us.

Individuals bearing witness cannot do the work of social movements, but they can break a corrosive and demoralizing silence.

In this country, the only way a minority can get anything done is to make a little noise.

The idea of protest organizing, as summarized by community organizer Saul Alinsky, is that if we put enough pressure on the government, it will do things to help people. We don't realize that that kind of organizing worked only when the government was very strong, when the West ruled the world, relatively speaking. But with globalization and the weakening of the nation-state, that kind of organizing doesn't work.

The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power.

People power. It has no limits.

We have to organize. We have to build up coalitions across all of these people who are considered "the other." If we all banded together and built coalitions that were truly intersectional, we would be in power. I believe in the power of the people.

True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it.

When millions of people stand up and fight...they win.

Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.

This is what people do in America. They get out. They demonstrate. They let their voices with heard.

This is a movement. This is not Trump. This is not anything. This is a movement. Remember, it is a movement. We used to say silent majority. It's not a silent majority, it's really a noisy majority.

There's a reason people pause their lives to engage in political activism and pressure their local political leaders. Because as a whole, even if you can't identify any one instance, as a whole pressure works and sometimes it starts with something as simple as pushing the button on the intercom.

People are fed up - and I think quite rightfully so. But what are they proposing as an alternative to just being upset or feeling disillusioned or abandoned? That kind of protest movement really needs to happen on a much bigger scale, but there needs to be a clearer message.

They came down on us because we had a grass-roots, real people's revolution, complete with the programs, complete with the unity, complete with the working coalitions, where we crossed racial lines.

The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.